As always happens with us, we had to tear ourselves away from 'home' which is where our heads have last been laid on a pillow. We spent a pretty relaxed couple of hours on the beach before driving up into the hills to Kritsa. This is a pretty mountain village,apparently far too full of day trippers in the summer months, but we were the only outsiders today. We find it extraordinary when in these mountains villages, it is rather similar to sitting in The Globe theatre and watching a drama unfold. In the mountains you can hear everything so family life is played out very publicly: yelling parents, children playing all over roads and the dogs and cats in various stages of hunger. The cats look pretty sleek as they live near on in the dustbins, and the poor old dogs are mostly chained up and bark nonstop. However today's village dogs were barking ecstatically as they were being loaded into a pickup truck to go off shooting.
View from Kritsa.
The olive trees are groaning around here
We drove into the village and found ourselves in a one way circuit which just went on going up and up with nowhere to stop as the streets were very narrow and the shops were still displaying yards of lace and embroidered table clothes. It was of quite high quality, definitely not tat and had we wanted anything I've no doubt we could have found it here. Anyway at the point where we couldn't go any higher there was a bar which offered us a) an opportunity to stop without causing a jam b) a chance to look back at the view (see pic above) and c) have some lunch.
Afterwards we were a little concerned that we'd have to fight our way back down through the narrow streets but the lady who's bar we were in said 'just keep going up and you'll eventually arrive back at
the bottom' yeah!!
So we did and she was right, only the road joined a one way street which I gaily joined and followed a youngster on a mountain bike who appeared to be making less than complimentary gestures in my
direction until I was eventually able to overtake him when he said something which I can only
imagine referred to my parents and at the point we met two cars coming toward us one overtaking the other and that was when I realized what the lad on the mountain bike was on about.
Anyway, we got away with it and headed on up to the Greko Roman settlement of Lato. Now what we hadn't quite grasped was that all Greek ancient sites close at 3pm, earlier if they can get away with it. So us turning up at 3.05pm wasn't going to be much good and there we learned another lesson - the cars which nearly drove us off the road as we ascended were the staff abandoning their posts for their much needed afternoon siesta!
We then drove on to the apart/hotel Villa Mare Monte which wasn't exactly as we'd imagined it - the
quiet Cretan hotel. It was a Cosmos Holidays destination where tourists arrive in a bus, spend 7 days sitting by the pool and then go home again.
Unfortunately on the way we had strayed off the main road to look over a Minoan site on the outskirts of the village and without a word (bark) or warning a dog had thrown itself under our car. A yelp and a thump later, that awful sick feeling in your stomach, no sign of the dog, we drove on shaking.
We were welcomed fondly by Madame who cleverly said 'we are not mind readers, if there is anything you need or do not like let us know' thus dispelling the threat of vicious attacks on TripAdvisor we enquired as to the time of supper. 7.30 she said which didn't really appeal too much so she added, but 8.30 would be fine. What we didn't realize was that nothing on a Cosmos Holiday is fresh, so at 7.30 your dinner is ready and if you choose to eat it at 8.30, well that's your problem. It was not a good experience. However chatting to the other guests including madame's 92 y.o father (who must have fought in WWII) we soon re-found our sense of humour and peace and tranquility returned - apart for being unable to forgive the fact that the wifi only worked around the pool and the bar.
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