My Return Trip to Beautiful Crete

I have recently returned from a lovely week’s holiday in Crete. My sister and I usually try and sneak a week away for some R&R and to escape from the kids, fellas and the rat race in general.

We stayed just outside the beautiful town of Agios Nikolaos which is on the North East coast of Greece’s largest Island and the place really is incredibly pretty. It’s a bustling little place with a really nice vibe. The harbour is lined with chic little bars and cafes.  Lake Voilismeni or ‘the bottomless lake’ as it’s known is also surrounded by taverna’s and cocktail bars which makes it a great town for a day or night out.

Most of our time was spent lazing by the pool during the day and eating & drinking in the evening, which was exactly what we had intended, however there was one trip that we definitely wanted to do. Whilst we were there we took a boat trip to Spinalonga Island which is opposite the tiny village of Plaka. This was made famous in the best-selling novel ‘The Island’ by Victoria Heslop. The book tells a tale of war and disease and how Spinalonga was turned in to a leper colony, so anyone entering the walls of the town through the forboding archway was destined never to return. Although the book was fiction it was based on true events. It’s sad to think that the Greek government still used the island as a leper colony right up until 1957. Having read the book the streets and houses of Spinalonga really come to life as you’re wandering through them.

The whole coastline is breathtakingly beautiful and the weather was fantastic whilst we were there – around 28 degrees every day and sunny skies. The only blight to our trip was the collapse of Thomas Cook. We were on a Thomas Cook package holiday and I have to say that the repatriation process was extremely smooth and we were allowed to continue our holiday as normal.  We were transferred back to the airport and flown home at exactly the same time as originally scheduled.

Having started my career in a travel agency that eventually got swallowed up by T.C. my heart went out to all my friends and the staff of Thomas Cook who found themselves out of a job. And yet the rep still turned up to the hotel to check on guests’ welfare and help them with information as well as the cabin crew who flew us back on a voluntary basis (and gave us a very moving arrival speech).

It was a sad end to a fantastic holiday.

Until next time….