Summary of Crete

After spending more than seven months and 5000 km driving in Crete from October 2013 until May 2014 “the list” of positive sides must be obviously longer than the negative sides. For me this was my 10th visit to Greece and second time with a camper, but first visit with camper in Crete and I think now that it was a very good choice to drive in this beautiful island.

For weather vise Crete is better than Spain or Portugal, or I was just lucky this year. Few bigger stormy days, some rainy days, but often the rain came during the night, so I could keep dry feet and the doggy dry fur. Maybe the wind is keeping the rainy clouds often away, but sometimes the wind was really disturbing and you could just wish that the wind gives you a break next day...

Last days in Crete

End side of Falasarna Beach

 As the days were ending in Crete we enjoyed still some beautiful days before leaving the island behind in Falasarna, west side of Crete. Big beach and very peaceful place. Good spot to stay if you take the ferry from Kissamos directly to Peloponnes (Gytheion). We did long walks with doggy and she had plenty of running on the beach...

One night stop at Kalives

Kalives or Kalyves is a pretty seaside village 20 km east of Chania. Queit and good stop if you need to catch a ferry next day from Chania. I noticed that most tourists were from UK, but also heard some Scandinavian languages. I think its ideal village for those who seeks a peaceful holiday out of noise, there is beautiful beach and many tavernas to choose from. Hotels looked more fine than Im used to it with swimmingpools and well taken care gardens.

River passing in Kalives

BabaYaga - animal friendly rock bar

View to the beach from BabaYaga, on the left the famous Matala rocks

As I have written about Matala already few times before, I never mentioned this nice bar, where I have spent good moments - Babayaga rockstation bar in Matala beach. It´s runned by an Italian chap, Roberto and his Greek girlfriend Sophia is his second hand in there. BabaYaga is truly an animal friendly bar, one time I was counting that there were more dogs than people - well, one reason for this was that they did BBQ and loads of bones left for all doggies.As it´s name tells, it is a rock bar, good music and also live music time to time, since Roberto himself playes guitar too. The bar is open all year around, in winter every thursday-sunday. Rock on!

Touring with mom

This village name works only for the Finns, means Village for perverts in Finnish

My mom was visiting Crete in April and we were touring together for a week. We had sun, rain, wind and loads of laugh :). After the Spinalonga Island, we started to drive to south-east in Kato Zakros and walked through the Dead´s Gorge (my fourth time already this winter, but always such a nice experience to walk there, see PHOTOS IN HERE), spent good moments again in Taverna Glaros. We had a stop in Ierapetra, one easy going day in Tsoutsouros beach in full peace and then we went to Matala for two nights, meeting the hippies :P. Last night a stop in Zorbas Island next to Heraklion and so was the week over!

Spinalonga Island

Finally I managed to get myself to the Spinalonga leper island, I have been around the island during this winter several times and always "pushed" my visit further or there were no boats going. So now I had this chance when my mom was coming touring in Crete for one week in April. My earliers bloggings from Spinalonga you can read HERE and HERE . Someone told me that Spinalonga is the third visited place in Greece, first is Akropolis, second Knossos and Spinalonga would be third. I dont know if its true, but this I was told... To Nisi television serie (in Finnish - Saari) has sure made this Island more visited!