Easy-Going Eastern Crete

We arrived from Western Crete and Chania after a detour to have lunch and wander around Rethimno’s old town. At Rethimno we bid antío to western Crete and headed for the other end of the island.

Rethimno. The long, organized (meaning services and beach chairs you can hire) beach stretches along for a few kilometers with plenty of restaurants and hotels to choose from. After lunch at Le Dome, we wandered down the beach and into old town to stretch our legs and check it out.

We were divided in Rethimno. I liked it more than my better half did, which means we didn’t care for it. What I liked was it felt like a place you could relax by the beach stress-free for a few days but still with a small city to explore in the evenings. What she didn’t love was that it lacked the energy and beautiful chaos of Chania and old town was filled with tourist shops all selling mostly the same stuff. Agreeing to permit the other their own opinion we hopped back in our chariot and pointed it east.

Agios Nikolaus. We loved Agios Nikolaus and all of eastern Crete from the moment of our arrival. We spent five nights in an apartment about a fifteen-minute walk from the old port and used it as a base to explore some beaches, islands and highlands.

Now named after Saint Nicholas, a settlement first came here in the Minoan Bronze Age and continued through the Greek and Roman periods. The town is built on hillsides that overlook the port and Lake Voulismeni, a once freshwater lake, connected to the sea by a small channel which was alleged to be bottomless and where the goddess Athena once bathed. Today, it’s surrounded by restaurants high and low along its surrounding hilltops and boardwalks.

We had not one bad meal or experience in Agios Nikolaus. On our first night, we chose Karnagio, a super authentic and super busy place where we ate the evening special lamb dish (which came out hanging on a hook) and some spicy shrimps. Befriending regular visitors Simon and Debbie from Devon in the UK at the table next door, we got their tips for visiting the area and toasted with raki (several complimentary bottles of it) with Simon, Debbie, the manager and the waitstaff.

For a second dinner, we chose the somewhat swanky Migomis Piano Restaurant where we overlooked the lake from above while listening to the live stylings of the best of Sinatra, Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder and others. Our final dinner was at Piato, the fanciest of the bunch. It overlooks the port and the food was delicious. For some reason, the main courses were flying out of the kitchen as we sat (to the complaints of a few diners who wanted a meal over which they could linger) but the kitchen cooled its jets, and our meal came out at a proper pace. The upstairs balcony is the place to sit.

Spinalonga and Kanali (aka Simon and Debbie day). As previously mentioned, we gathered recommendations from our new UK friends and set off for Spinalonga island.

Even though Spinalonga was an ancient fortress, that structure lay in ruins until the Venetians fortified it (with 35 cannons, 7 churches and a military facility with an advanced water system) to protect Crete and their shipping routes from the emerging Turkish threat and from pirates in the 13th century. The island remained in Venetian hands even after Crete fell to the Ottoman Empire in the 1600s and many Christians evacuated mainland Crete for Spinalonga and a couple of other island forts which also remained in Venetian hands.

It was turned over to the Ottomans in 1715 after they promised to safely transfer local residents to Corfu. Alas, they reneged on the agreement and slaughtered or enslaved the locals.

In the 19th century, Muslims still inhabited Spinalonga until almost 1900 when the Christians retook Crete. Later, beginning in 1904, the island was used as a leper colony initially for Cretans with leprosy and later for lepers from across Greece. Several year later, a hospital was built to treat those with the disease. In the 1930s, the Brotherhood of the Sick at Spinalonga tried to improve conditions, clean spaces and create an improved sense of camaraderie among the residents. Before they arrived, conditions had been pretty grim.

After World War II, the island was abandoned, and rumors and fears of leprosy infection kept the looters away. In 1976, the island was declared an archaeological site and became a tourist attraction in the early 2000s.

You can get there from Plaka Beach by water taxi or from Elounda or Agios Nikolaus by boat (some of which are several-hours-long affairs and don’t just visit Spinalonga). We chose a 20-minute boat with about a 75-minute stay on the island in and out of Elounda.

After our island visit, we beat a trail to Kanali Restaurant across a small causeway and about a 20-minute walk from the Elounda port. It’s a fish place right on a canal recommended by Simon and Debbie and it was amazing.

The Beaches. We spent an afternoon at Voulisma Beach, where you can rent a chair, stand up paddles or just lie in the sand and swim in turquoise and deep blue waters. We stayed several hours until a neighboring chair was occupied by a cigar smoking Greek who blew his smoke up into the air, wafting it at us and our neighbors, for hours leaving our clothes and nostrils with the scent reminiscent of my old fraternity chapter meetings.

We skipped Plaka Beach and Vai Beach, both recommended and reportedly beautiful and “organized” (with services) but did visit our own local beach steps away from our apartment which was small, quaint and chill (and didn’t require a drive).

Lasithi Plateau. On our last day under the Cretan sun, we drove up over high mountains with temperatures dropping from the 80s Fahrenheit to mid-60s (27-28 to 18 Celsius) to check out the Lasithi Plateau, traditional Cretan mountain villages, and the area’s famous windmills.

In one of the mountains, you can find the Psychro cave where Zeus was born and hidden away by his mother, Rhea, from father, Cronus, who had pledged to eat his newborn children after hearing a prophecy that one of them would overthrow him. Alas for Cronus, Zeus survived to take on his seat on Mount Olympus as king of the gods after being raised by nymphs on the fertile Cretan plains and alas for us, the Psychro cave was temporarily closed for remodel and repairs during our visit.

The plateau itself was once dotted with 12,000 white-sailed windmills which were used to draw water for irrigation of the crops in the fertile valley. Sadly, only their skeletons remain and very few are still in operation. If you come from Heraklion, you’ll likely ascend over the mountain and past a set of windmills, used to grind grain, which still partially stand overlooking the tour groups as they ascend the winding switchback road. In wintertime, the plateau turns white with a brilliant snowscape. But for us, it was just a brilliant fall day.

We visited Tzermiado, the regional capital for a lunch of gyros at a local taverna, where the local men were starting their weekend early with copious amounts of raki. We came up to the valley the back way from Agios Nikolaus (the road less traveled) through small villages like Zenia, Mesa Potami and Mesa Lasithi. Taverna owners wave at you (encouraging a stop) and women selling honey by the roadside beckon you. This is a rural area with less traffic than the Heraklion road, so if you do take it you may want to stop in the support the local economy. The Psychro cave being closed cannot help.

We adored eastern Crete and if we were to return to the island would focus our time here. While we liked the west, the east is so much more chill and easy-going but, in the end, we were glad we’d split our time evenly between east and west to experience both ends of Greece’s largest island.

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