The quest for the orange Calippo

Published on Thu 16 Aug 2012

Had a nice relaxing break in Crete last week. I've not been on an all inclusive holiday before. It's a bit of a risk I guess paying for all your food in advance from a single place, but in this case it was great (and good value) and the amount of time you save not having to find/decide on somewhere to eat effectively doubles the length of your stay. I also think I might have finally developed a mature attitude to beer, what with there being a limitless supply and me not having very much or wanting more than I had. I got to do some of my approximation of swimming, and some reading, which was very enjoyable.

I got a Terry Pratchett book (Snuff) and a Wallander one from Tesco in a 2 for £7 deal the night before we left. I read the Pratchett one first, having not read anything by him since I was at school. I wasn't expecting to love it, but actually it was fairly engrossing until about 3/4 of the way through and despite some cack handed references to other books in the series (must be difficult to know how to handle that kind of thing - making a book stand alone while not repeating yourself) not as geeky as I was expecting. The Wallander one is even better, and it is pretty apparent where Steig Larsson got his (inferior, though maybe it's in the translation...) style. I've not finished yet, but I'm expecting to soon. They drink a lot of coffee over there in Sweden eh? I'll be reading more. Though I know what happens in the one before due to some cack handed references to the denouement in this one...

Crete is an extremely beautiful place, if a little bit run down. There are a lot of construction projects that have ground to a halt either as the shell of the building or as a 1 storey building that's being used with steel rods sticking out of the top ready for the second storey to be built at some point in the future. Presumably people keep trying to build hotels and running out of money. I wonder if you can still build another storey on a building once the steel that was meant to be for reinforcing the concrete above has all rusted and flopped.

Mostly time was spent lounging around, apart from one day when we made it into Chania. The old part for the city is lovely and reminded me slightly of Barcelona for some reason.

They have a fun market

and a harbour that was built by the Venetians and they seem very proud of.

We came quite close to doing a glass bottomed boat trip, but they guy lost us when he said "and you'll see up to 5 different types of fish!" I can east more types of fish than that at the chippy.

Other than a fun day trip to the water park that was the only time we ventured from the hotel. Here are some things I thought.

Vauxhall/Opel still use the snippet from "Layla" in their adverts. I'm not sure if "once bitten forever smitten" sounds as good in Greek.
The entire country's economy would probably be drastically improved if anywhere sold orange Calippos. Seriously - not one to be had anywhere and they are the best of the ice lollies. I found a few lime ones. Why would anyone want a lime one?
Another thing that would make everyone's life easier would be if buses were numbered according to where they're going rather than by which actual bus it is. Chania bus station was insane. Can you imagine if they did that with train platforms? "No we're not going to tell you where to go for the London train, but it's engine number 36421."
The stones on the beach at Tavronitis look like they would be absolutely perfect for skimming, but it's virtually impossible. I think it must be something to do with the temperature of the sea messing up the surface tension, or maybe the sharp slope of the beach meaning they're falling too fast before they hit the water. I did manage 5 bounces on one throw but I'd have expected twice that.
I still love land trains. I think it dates back to a childhood holiday in Spain.
Even though it's extremely hot, there are a lot of very pretty flowers and plants.
Painting all the trees white so they don't get as hot is something that hadn't occured to me before.
The sunsets there are amazing - you can see all the colours of the rainbow in the sky. Only the week before I'd been wondering why you never see green. Turns out you do.
There are few sadder sights than a derelict minigolf course. So much hope. So much potential....