While in Chania we went to the Agia Triada monastery on the Akrothiri peninsula.....
and bought and tried their wine..... not a success!
We did however visit a great winery..... Nostos Manousakis in the hills inland from Chania.
and round the back they were distilling their 45 proof Raki equivalent!
We enjoyed a light lunch......with wine!
and of course we did visit the market in Chania for fish..........
and RAKI!!
This we bought from the barrel at a place which seemed to be well visited by locals, so we decided to indulge.... we bought a litre of Raki for 5 euros! Very cheap and very good! We ended up finishing it off before going through the security check at Heraklion airport on our return journey. Too good to waste!
I had found a Slow Food restaurant online and we decided to detour to have lunch there en route to Rethymno. We took the scenic drive.... through the Theriso Gorge, seeing lots of goats!
Crete has a lot of them.... both goats and gorges!!! However the Theriso gorge has the advantage that it has a road through it....
We arrived at Dounias in the middle of nowhere!
but with a fantastic view.......
It was definitely worth the detour!
We were the first to arrive....
and we were invited into the kitchen to view the days offerings!
We essentially said 'yes' to all!
The kitchen was definitely practicing slow cooking......
and the chef just stopped bringing us dishes after he felt we had had enough.......
In fact we heard him say to the neighbouring table ...you have both had enough..... and pointed to the fact that they were both rather portly!!
The meal and the ambience was great...... and it was only around 8 euros per person. And that included wine and coffee!
We were intrigued by how they kept wasps/bees from the table...and obviously it reuses the coffee grinds....
While there we also got to see the arrival of freshly picked grapes and seeing them being dumped into a grinder!
They tasted great.....
We then went on to Aptera.....which like so many sites in Crete was closed....shorter opening hours due to their economic woes. However we were able to see a lot of it from the road.
We continued on to the impressive nearby Turkish Fort....
Where they were preparing for a wedding with a view!
On arrival at the Avli in Rethymno......
where we had stayed last year and this time had rooms booked in their Candy suites, we realised fairly quickly there might be a problem. Greeted by.....you need 2 rooms?? Yes....our booking was for 2 rooms! They brought us a bottle of wine and then left us for quite a while......
And then said we would be having rooms in different places...but they were just around the corner from each other! We would just be in one for the night and our luggage would be moved to the originally booked place the following day. We actually ended up staying in the same room as last year....
which was about 5 times the size of the one we were supposed to be in!
.....and got to enjoy the rooftop pool....
On our return the following day we were taken to a self catering apartment which has to be in the busiest, noisiest part of the town. So it was turned down by us ... and then we found ourselves being escorted to a hotel very close to the one we should have been in....the Rimondi hotel. They only had a suite left but we weren't complaining! Ironically I had almost changed our reservations to that hotel a month or so before going but we decided to stay with the Avli reservations as we had really liked the people there!
We still went back to the rooftop pool in the Avli, this time with a bottle of wine...to enjoy the sunset....
where we were able to look down on the Rimondi pool!
Turned out that the Avli booking sites had been hacked and they had for 3 weeks about 8 more reservations than available rooms each night!!
and bought and tried their wine..... not a success!
We did however visit a great winery..... Nostos Manousakis in the hills inland from Chania.
and round the back they were distilling their 45 proof Raki equivalent!
We enjoyed a light lunch......with wine!
and of course we did visit the market in Chania for fish..........
and RAKI!!
This we bought from the barrel at a place which seemed to be well visited by locals, so we decided to indulge.... we bought a litre of Raki for 5 euros! Very cheap and very good! We ended up finishing it off before going through the security check at Heraklion airport on our return journey. Too good to waste!
I had found a Slow Food restaurant online and we decided to detour to have lunch there en route to Rethymno. We took the scenic drive.... through the Theriso Gorge, seeing lots of goats!
Crete has a lot of them.... both goats and gorges!!! However the Theriso gorge has the advantage that it has a road through it....
We arrived at Dounias in the middle of nowhere!
but with a fantastic view.......
It was definitely worth the detour!
We were the first to arrive....
and we were invited into the kitchen to view the days offerings!
We essentially said 'yes' to all!
The kitchen was definitely practicing slow cooking......
In fact we heard him say to the neighbouring table ...you have both had enough..... and pointed to the fact that they were both rather portly!!
The meal and the ambience was great...... and it was only around 8 euros per person. And that included wine and coffee!
We were intrigued by how they kept wasps/bees from the table...and obviously it reuses the coffee grinds....
While there we also got to see the arrival of freshly picked grapes and seeing them being dumped into a grinder!
They tasted great.....
We then went on to Aptera.....which like so many sites in Crete was closed....shorter opening hours due to their economic woes. However we were able to see a lot of it from the road.
We continued on to the impressive nearby Turkish Fort....
Where they were preparing for a wedding with a view!
On arrival at the Avli in Rethymno......
where we had stayed last year and this time had rooms booked in their Candy suites, we realised fairly quickly there might be a problem. Greeted by.....you need 2 rooms?? Yes....our booking was for 2 rooms! They brought us a bottle of wine and then left us for quite a while......
And then said we would be having rooms in different places...but they were just around the corner from each other! We would just be in one for the night and our luggage would be moved to the originally booked place the following day. We actually ended up staying in the same room as last year....
which was about 5 times the size of the one we were supposed to be in!
.....and got to enjoy the rooftop pool....
On our return the following day we were taken to a self catering apartment which has to be in the busiest, noisiest part of the town. So it was turned down by us ... and then we found ourselves being escorted to a hotel very close to the one we should have been in....the Rimondi hotel. They only had a suite left but we weren't complaining! Ironically I had almost changed our reservations to that hotel a month or so before going but we decided to stay with the Avli reservations as we had really liked the people there!
where we were able to look down on the Rimondi pool!
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