Crete - Sissi to Koutsounari

Since leaving the lovely Sissi campground on Friday, we have ridden up and down lots of hills, seen many little villages and sampled some Cretan food and wines. Our bodies are holding up ok with the riding, but we did have a couple of nice rest days.

These pretty, tall spikes were growing all over the rocky hillsides

 A stop for refreshments in the village of Krasi

The rich agricultural plains of the Lasithi Plateau high in the mountains
still has some of the old windmills used to pump water for irrigation


Stealth camp in an olive grove. The tinkling of goat bells could be heard all night

Olive trees as far as the eye can ses

The town of Agios (St.) Nicholas is a pretty seaside town that lured us to spend two nights there. Our map showed campground there, but we never did find one. So we found a decent room in a hotel complete with kitchen and a balcony overlooking the sea for €49.

The prettytown of St Nicholas 

View from our room at the Pergola Hotel

Outside a restaurant in the village of Mohlos.
 It doesn't get much fresher than this

Cretans have been producing olive oil since 3500BC

Frank on the catwalk modelling his new and only shirt and shorts!

Today we left behind the Sea of Crete to the north and got our first glimpse of the Libyan Sea as we rode from north shore to south shore. Crete's mountains run east-west across the island, but there is a break in them in the eastern and most narrow part of the island. So we rode that relatively flat road through this valley today.

Tonight we are enjoying another nice campground by the sea in a place called Koutsounari. It too has a lovely swimming pool and great facilities. However, we are being pummeled by really strong winds. The force is so strong right now that there's no way we would ride tomorrow. Morning will tell.

We had the campground pool all to ourselves

Preparing pasta dinner in the campground dining area




Comments

  1. Iveta bxSeptember 27, 2018 at 8:59 AM

    Have you found some really good olives? Sometimes you can encounter real culinary treasures in regular grocery stores in these places.

    ReplyDelete
  2. DaphneSeptember 28, 2018 at 9:06 AM

    We've certainly been buying a lot of olives. Sometimes they have them in the deli section and you just buy them by weight. In the country villages they tend to be in vacuum packs, but they seem to be pretty good too.

    But in the country stores, the best deal of all is their home-made raki sold in plastic no-name bottles, 1 litre for €5. Frank says it's like good slivovice. I prefer ouzo myself!

    ReplyDelete

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