Week 32 2026 One Daily Positive and Project 365

The negatives

One of the reasons we chose our hotel was for the peace and quiet the beach and the location to the town and the local train station. On our arrival the access to the beach was via a gravel, narrow and steep cliff top, via a broken fence in a neighbouring property and down a steep gravelling bank and the distance to the train station was doubled and on arrival we discovered there are NO trains in Crete.

The positives

Everything else fits the bill and we easily adapt and my complaint was responded to. It's not the hotels fault, it is all clearly listed on the website and the photos are clearly misleading, so I'm not making a fuss over nothing.

Peter's oldest friend from the age of 14, daughter is in Crete on her holiday with partner and own daughter and our neighbours flew out on Tuesday for a week. Both are about an hour away either side of us.

Saturday 8 August Woke around 8am and Peter went for breakfast. I had a cup of tea in the room as the hotel don't provide hot water. Only the British understand the need for boiling water when it comes to making tea. I can't eat any of what is supplied for breakfast or don't like what is on offer, so I'm having yogurts and fruit brought from the local supermarkets in the room and gluten free cereals I packed from home. I do join Peter though just to be social. We then walked into the town and had coffee and planned then booked three trips and worked out the local bus route. Next up explored the village and I had ice cream and found a supermarket with some 'go free' cereal so I'm sure if I look harder I may find bread etc. We had fresh juice in the harbour and walked back to the hotel. I needed to have some lunch, then we spent the afternoon on the veranda overlooking the sea reading books. In the evening we walked back into the town for dinner. I just had drinks.

Sunday 9 August I didn't sleep well. Peter left me to a lie in and he went for breakfast returning at 9.30am. we finally left the hotel at 11am and went for coffee and I wrote post cards before wandering into the town and found somewhere for lunch of freshly caught fish and vegetables. We wandered back around 3pm and chilled out in our room, then decided to sit pool side as the sea was quite choppy. I lay on my pool float for an hour reading then returned to the room for a shower and put together a salad for our dinner. We've found an English Channel with Greek subtitles and we've been watching Monk and House, but we also play guess the news story and I'm getting quite good with some of the written Greek words.

Monday 10 After breakfast we walked into the village to buy bus tickets had a coffee while we waited for the bus into Rethymno which took an hour and stopped at several hotels along the route. A typical tourist/market town. We stopped for a drink in the harbour and bought some souvenirs, caught the bus back had lunch in our village and spent the rest of the day in the pool. Made some video calls with the grandchildren and watched some TV.

Tuesday 11 August We were collected at 8.40am from the hotel and set off to Knossos Palace and Heraklion for the day. The tour guide was less than useless and changed the meeting times twice and failed to tell us so we wasted a lot of time. The queue for the tickets to Knossos took over half an hour and we rushed round not knowing he'd got round the other passengers saying we had an extra 45 mins, but the place was so packed with cruise ship visitors, we were fine drinking coffee and reading our books, but had we had known we could have had lunch rather than cutting our time at the next stop. The visit to Heraklion City was much better, we walked around the Venetian Harbour, we had lunch and found a gluten free bakery to die for and I stocked up for the rest of the trip. Peter bought a couple of t shirts and a few more souvenirs were purchased. The tour guide made sarcastic comments towards us by thanking those for bringing positivity to his day after we had complained to him and he fell asleep on the way back after scrolling through all his socials. We spent the evening in the hotel by the pool. I phoned my friend to wish her a happy birthday. I had my Starbucks fix.

Wednesday 12 We went into the village in the morning for coffee and a wander, then attempted the local hotel beach. It was not a good experience. It was accessed via a very steep and rocky bank and as there was no one else there we decided not to swim, so spent the rest of the afternoon in the pool. We went back into the village for dinner and I'm struggling with finding something different to eat each night. I had some grilled chicken, sadly they decided to cover it in herbs and drown it in butter. We had video calls with our son and DIL and watched the eclipse with them as the sun had already set in Crete. Our DILs sister shared some colander photos with us and granddaughter showed us how to use the toilet roll method.

Thursday 13 We caught the bus back into Rethymno as it was Market day. I needed some large safety pins to fix my rucksack straps. eventually we found a seamstress who sold me some. We found a restaurant that served gluten free pasta and it was delicious and we were there for around 2 hours and I even had a pudding that wasn't ice cream. We'll be going back before we leave. We got off the bus in the village. Peter walked back to the hotel to the pool and I had a video call with my granddaughter so she could choose the toy cat she wanted that most looked like our cat from a shop I found that 100s of them.

Friday 14 Collected at 8.30am from our hotel and dropped at 10am at the entrance to Imbros Gorge. On the map was written 12.30pm and we were told 'enough time, back here, lunch, go, go' mmmmmmm. The companies information sheet had said guided walk 3-4 hours. No choice now as the bus had driven off, but of course we did it in 2 hours. The bus then took us to a beach where we hired sun loungers for 2 hours and swam in the Libyan Sea. We had a 2 hour drive back picking up other people who had been on different trips and we saw some refugees at a harbour who had been picked up and were detained by police at a harbour. We met a couple who were running the Berlin Marathon next month and they were happy to share some guidance with me for next year. We were dropped back at the hotel. I spent the evening reading and Peter went out for dinner on his own. We found a donkey wandering through the gorge.

On the blog this week:

Days out in my campervan in July 2026

Word of the week - Crete

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