I woke up early, realising that today we would be leaving Santorini. I felt sad that we would no longer wake up to this glorious view but I was looking forward to having some pool time in Crete.
We got up and had our final breakfast on the terrace before repacking our cases ready for another ferry ride, which would be considerably shorter and more reasonable than our last one.
We arrive at Fira port an hour before our ferry is due to depart. It looks like complete chaos, people are just being dropped off in any old place and it’s unclear which gate we need to go to.
We find a woman who looks like she works here and she tells us which gate we need, fortunately, there is a restaurant right next to our gate and we find ourselves a seat and order drinks and watch the frenzy of the port. Our ferry is a little late but we board quickly and are soon on our way.
We soon arrive in Heraklion in Crete to a crowd of drivers holding up signs, I breathe a sigh of relief when I see a lady holding mine up.
Does anyone else live in constant fear that it’s all going to go wrong? I spend 90% of my life worrying about stupid stuff, such as drivers not turning up, hotels not having our booking, and having the wrong dates, despite having confirmation of all of this. It’s exhausting!
We settle down for the long journey of just over 2 hours, our driver gets us there as quickly as possible even tailgating and overtaking a police car. Love it!
We arrive at our beautiful hotel just before 9 pm, we unpack and head downstairs for a drink. The hotel restaurants have now closed so we go back to the room and order room service. We will explore tomorrow.
I wake up around 8 am ready to get my sunbathe on! I shower, apply my suncream and repaint my nails before heading downstairs.
I find a nice spot on the beach and chill out on the sun loungers whilst waiting for the husband to emerge.
We grab some lunch from the snack bar and have a wander around the hotel, it’s huge with 3 pools and I think 4 or 5 restaurants. The complete opposite of the last couple of hotels we’ve been in.
We relocate to beds around the pool with a swim-up bar and spend the afternoon drinking cocktails and lounging in the sun. Bliss.
We book a local restaurant for dinner which of course is highly rated in Tripadvisor – they have not let us down yet – and head back to the room to get ready for dinner.
A short walk later we are in a cute hotel/apartment restaurant with a table by the pool. The bestie has very kindly given us money for our anniversary to spend on a nice dinner together and this is it.
We share a bruschetta and grilled mushrooms to start which is delicious. Everything tastes so fresh! I don’t particularly like tomatoes but these are so tasty.
I then have chicken schnitzel, the husband has beef meatballs and we share a bottle of red wine. The chicken was so tender! We decided we definitely want to come back before we go home.
Towards the end of the meal I start to feel a bit of heartburn, it’s not something I usually suffer with. We come back to the hotel and order some drinks and watch the live saxophone player. I realise I can’t drink anymore I’m too uncomfortable so we decide to call it a night.
I can’t believe it’s only our 3rd day in Crete! Each place we’ve been to, it feels like we’ve been there a lot longer and Crete is no exception.
I wake up still feeling a bit rubbish from last night’s heartburn or whatever it is, it’s irritating me now and I have a little bit of a sore throat.
We are planning to go into Chania town today and I want to walk, it takes about an hour so we want to wait until after the midday sun, it will be far too hot and I fear the husband may burn into an actual crisp!
Neither of us is hungry enough for breakfast so we lounge around in the room for the morning before heading down for some lunch to fuel our walk. We both have a cheese and bacon burger which I’m sure will not help my digestive situation, but I will worry about that as and when I need to.
The walk, however, did help, even if the temperature was still soaring. We arrived in Chania old town at a beautiful Marina with restaurants and bars overlooking the water’s edge. We stopped for drinks, the husband persuading me that a gin a tonic would help me to feel better, although I was entirely convinced.
We wander around the marina stopping at different bars, and browsing in shops for our 3rd holiday magnet (we get one for every trip we go on) we then stroll through the maze of lanes with more bars, restaurants and shops and the husband buys me a beautiful silver evil eye bracelet which I have been longing for since we arrived in Greece.
We finally decide on a restaurant in the old town in the marina where the husband has sea bass and I have heavenly shrimp linguine. The food here in Crete is so good!
We then get ourselves in a taxi home and drink gin & tonics on our balcony.
The sore throat and heartburn remain when I wake up this morning, I can’t help but think this is yet another joyous part of getting older. Yay.
Even though I’m on holiday, I am still checking my emails and as I do I see a part-time, remote freelance job that sounds perfect for me, I apply without a moment’s hesitation and it’s not until afterwards I realise that I barely felt a scrap of anxiety.
I pondered this for a bit, it felt quite foreign to me to just boldly go and do this, was I awake? I spoke to the husband and I realised the reason I felt this way was because it was something I’m already doing, something I am passionate about and something I know I am more than capable of.
We head down to lay on the beach for the day, we break the lounging around to go to one of the hotel restaurants for a spot of lunch, I order the club sandwich which is made with focaccia bread and comes with wedges. All the food here seems to taste so light and airy but somehow still filling!
After a post-lunch sunbathe, we decide to brave the beautiful sea, which is a bit choppy today. I turn my back to the sea to look at the husband and am hit by a rather large wave from behind, I go under emerging without my sunglasses and the top half of my swimsuit lower down than it should be!
I quickly cover my modesty and panic about my sunglasses being gone but we soon find them on the sea bed. Crisis averted.
For dinner we head to another local restaurant where I have the chicken pasta, the husband has lamb knuckle and we share a cheesecake for dessert, but the heartburn gets the better of me so we decide to head back to the hotel, we order some drinks from the bar and sit on our balcony.
The following day, the husband is feeling a bit queasy and I still have whatever this is going on in my body, there is a blustery wind going on outside, so a morning chill out in the room is decided.
When we do finally plot ourselves up on the beach the wind has really picked up and the waves are even choppier, there will be no exposing myself today me thinks.
That evening we have the Japanese restaurant in our hotel booked, and we notice that most people in the restaurant are quite a lot older than we are, then when we go to the lobby bar, the husband says it was like God’s waiting room, to be fair given my recent ailments, I am beginning to wonder if it actually is, not a bad place to wait I suppose.
With not long left of the holiday, I am determined to spend a full day sunbathing, so I head down for some poolside lounging.
I realise in the early afternoon that I am starting to get a little bit burnt so the husband and I spend the afternoon in the swim up bar pool drinking cocktails.
When we go back to the room to get ready, I feel like I am raring to go, but as we head into Chania, my party feeling starts to disappear and goes completely after a delicious carbonara.
On our final full day, we finally try the breakfast. I’m feeling a bit burnt so it will be the shade on the beach for me today.
I spend the day speaking to a friend of mine about step-parenting and decide to finally bite the bullet and write about this topic as it’s something that isn’t as openly discussed as it should be.
I am filled with inspiration and start jotting some ideas down with the sounds of the sea lapping the shore in the background.
We are due to check out of the hotel at midday, which works out perfect timing to leave for the airport.
We have a short flight delay which is followed by the flight from hell, I have a toddler sitting behind me kicking my seat for the entire journey whilst their sibling is screaming at full volume. I couldn’t wait to get off the plane!!
2023-07-11 13:27:00
