rethymno - crete -greece

what about crete in early august? well, we have had 37 to 40 degrees celsius in the shadow in western crete (rethymnon / rethymno), where we spent one week of our summer holidays wit our youngest daughter :-)

the obligatory sunset

our beach in missiria (eastern rethymnon)

port + historic city centre of rethymno

the best of all wives

the venetian fortress (fortezza) in rethymno

lake kourna

the fat cat of silver city argiroupolis (= ancient lappa)

st. nicolaos church in one of the many canyons of western crete

there are not many vultures (geier) left in europe, but few of them live up there

old venetian house in rethymno

there is still a lot to improve in greece ... no wonder the young people riot, you know ... e.g.our waitresses earned only approx. 900 euros a month and have only 3 days free ... wtf? 900 euros for 27 days of full-time-job? omg :-(

even more pictures here

our last year's visit to central crete (malia - heraklion)

ikaros - crete - greece

we didn't had much time for holidays this summer, so we spent just one week in the beautiful hotel ikaros beach resort + spa with many friendly russian, german + french tourists in malia on crete / creta / kreta  in greece ... it was a really nice week here in greece and the greek people so friendly to us ... we will come back soon, i hope  ... btw, the last year's crete pictures from heraklion are here.

we've also managed to make a one day trip to ancient archaeological sites on gortyna + phaistos / faistos / festos (i know, the translation from cyrillic into latin letters is hard) and visited also the hippie (festival) village matala in south crete, so enjoy few pictures from all these places ...

 

 

 

 our hotel ikaros beach in malia, northern crete

2 archaeological sites in southern crete ~ gortyna + faistos

 

 

 

 welcome to matala

 

ancient roman cemetery

 back to our hotel ikaros, malia

 
 
 
 
meow miau

 
 
good-bye greece, see you soon again ...

more pictures in my corresponding g+ album.
eof

western crete

after i've show you the industrial part of crete here (our hotel area + heraklion), here you'll see pictures from our day trips in western crete:

• knossos, the first european culture (minoan)
• lasithi plateau
• chania (hania), our favourite city on crete
• kournas lake
• rethymnon (rethymno, rethimnon, rethimno, Ρέθυμνο )

a) knossos

 the 4,500 years old palace (reconstructed approximately 1900-1933)

 the labyrinth ('minotaurus') ~ there were approx. 1,500 rooms for approx. 1,000 people in the palace including all the storage rooms (food brought as tax)

 two of us

the black sheep

crete ~ heraklion

summer holidays with wife and youngest daughter in europe, greece, crete / creta / kreta, heraklion area, amoudara (ammoudara), hotel apollonia beach resort & spa close to 4 factories, 2 hotel building ruins, industrial port with 2-4 ships being uploaded or waiting for upload each day, airport and with layers of concrete and broken metal tubes in the sea in front of our hotel (dirty water pipelines and pipelines for sea water facilities for swimming pool?)  ... the romantic of the post-industrial era, is it? 

well, don't ask me after which criteria have my two lovely girls chosen that hotel :-)  ... probably because it was the #1 for crete in a public feedback website holidaycheck.de .... and yes, we like the hotel a lot anyway, especially the so fantastic food and the so friendly staff here .... if you asked me, the chimneys of the first (and biggest) factory are high enough to spread the smoke above our hotel and the sea absorbed the rusting pipelines and masses of concrete also quite well (probably was it a cheap way of waste disposal few decades ago or it has something to do with the salt water swimming pool facilities, who knows?), so we've also acclimated to this industrial scenery soon :-)

sweet romantic of the post-industrial era at appolonia beach close to amoudara, heraklion

our last time in greece was 2012 at the peloponnese peninsula looking at beautiful beach and romantic sunset behind the hills of the kefalonia island ...

btw, unlike we would expect, we haven't seen much poverty on crete .... and yes, the the beggars in heraklion we have supported at our first visit rather belonged to a beggar gang than to the poor locals as the waitress in a cafe told us ...

well, enjoy few crete pictures from our day trips here, few hotel and heraklion area pictures are  just below:

 river meets ocean #1

river meets ocean #2

 

a construction stuff factory? you see the entry in the hill? an old military or industrial bunker?

 one of the ships being loaded at our beach

 inside that strange bunker ...

back to the beach ... what a nice stones out there :-)

 view from our hotel room balcony to heraklion ...

32 times zoomed :-)

koules fortress is a venetian fortress of Rocca al Mare (1523–1540) on the left side

 

 Agios Minas Cathedral

ikarus + daedalus (ikaros + daedalos)

 

the venetian loggia (1626–28)

 omg😇

the venetian morozini fountain at lion's square (built under care of francesco morosini in 1629)

 ... by night with soooo many people sitting around in the cafes + restaurants

... whar about the crete mythos?

 heraklion by night. there is no crisis in heraklion, you know? 

the bars + cafes + restaurants are full with locals + tourists 😉

... all censored and uploaded crete pictures here
more coming soon or never 😃