Visiting the gorgeous city of Ierapetra ! ☀️ a stunning, quiet, village.
My jaw dropped. It’s the most southern city on the island of Crete, and you can even spot the unhabited Chrissi island, which is close to the Libyan sea and Egypt. We wanted to go there, but in the middle of August is the worst time. The boat drops you off there for the day, there are barely any trees to take cover from the sun, and it’s basically African sun !
But Ierapetra was stunning, the people were extra nice… the nicest of the whole island. Food was exquisite ! I loved it there.
I’ve been less and less into blogging lately, for various reasons…
As you know I’m taking online classes, that I started a while back, and I have to finish them pretty soon, as I have a deadline for my certificate… so there’s that.
Then, I need to finish up my boyfriend’s website, and then my own ! I’ll let you know more on that stuff soon-ish.
If you’ve been following my adventures from a couple posts ago, then you know we somehow stranded ourselves on Spinalonga island, tried to bribe our way back to shore without any luck, until we bumped into the nicest boat guy who was sailing for a village named Plaka… and he only took us in because there was an alert being broadcasted for an incoming storm, and they stopped sending boats on waters.
Got to this beautiful seaside village, to dry ourselves in a café because we got drenched in the boat, under a crazy rain. Finally found a taxi to take us back to our hotel in another city, the pretty Elounda, and got not-so-suprised by the storm during that ride. Ran from taxi door, to hotel door, in already over two inches of rain. Ended up wet again, but at the rooftop restaurant of our hotel, with a nice cocktail. Delightful. In France we say “après la pluie, le beau temps” so I guess, good weather must be incoming now.
We ended up in this little seaside village unexpectedly…
I don’t know if you remember, but in the last post I told you about the little situation we got ourselves into, which was : we missed our boat back ! We couldn’t pay our way out of Spinalonga island, and got stuck there for over an hour… we tried explaining this, but no other boat wanted to take us as there were some “safety measures” they needed to follow (???)
Finally someone with some sense told us, we could be waiting there for longer than that, because there was a storm coming, and they might be the last boat going back to shore for a while. They accepted us in, otherwise we could have stayed on leper island until who knows when ! Because yes, on top of everything else, as you can see on the pictures, the sky was moody and the clouds started being menacing.
So they took us to Plaka, as they were sailing there. They explained it wasn’t too far from Elounda, and we could probably catch a taxi from there to go back to our hotel. We replied “HAPPILY, GET US OUT OF HERE” 😂
It gave us the opportunity to visit this little village, it was really cute and the views on the island were quite breathtaking. We dried ourselves in a nice café, because yes, the rain caught to us while on the boat 😅 what a trip.
Three years ago we completely fell in love with this island 🤍 🇬🇷
And we’ve been back every year since ! So this is our third… we’re still obsessed with Crete, and the Cretan people are some of the nicest, most generous we’ve met through our different travels. We just love their vibe !
The first thing we do upon arrival at the airport, is get our car and start the road trip right away. We drive fast, until a beautiful little beach, or cove catches our sight, and we make our stop there : take off all of our airplane clothes, and jump in the sea 🌊
Trust me, it is the best feeling ever. Since we travel there in August / September, the water is so warm, you don’t even have to wait for your skin to get adjusted. It’s the perfect temperature. After that first little (or longer) swim, we go for lunch… and oh my gosh, how nice it is to have a proper Greek salad, with dakos ! Cretans offer some dessert or fruit when you ask for the bill, and a little digestive; ouzo and raki are the most common ones.
The feeling of being wholly disconnected from our stressful Parisian lives, barely an hour after landing… and the freedom the car gets us is unmatchable. It’s just smiles & adventures now, for two weeks ☀️
Madison Kennedy 