We are back again, just can’t stay away from Greece and Crete in particular. This time we travelled further east to Elounda. An easy hour’s drive from Heraklion airport (flying time 3.5 hours), the area of Elounda is just a few kilometres north of the region’s main town, Aghios Nikolaus and its where most of the luxury hotels are.
Our first hotel was the resort of Domes Elounda, just a couple of kilometres north of the village of Elounda itself. Set over a hillside and spread out over a great distance, its tasteful buildings
and grounds are built to blend in with the environment perfectly. The views from the main reception block and it’s stunning Grand Domes Bar are exceptional and are replicated all over the
resort. The resort is so spacious, and hilly, that guests tend to call on the fleet of chauffeur driven golf buggies to move from different parts of the resort. Never does it feel crowded, even though it was almost at 100% occupancy during our stay.
We hung out on the beach mostly during the day. It was one of our very top hotel beach experiences- exceptionally pretty, with comfy sun loungers under tamarisk trees, providing shade while the Aegean lapped at your feet a matter of inches away. The beach is styled by the swimwear company Vilebrequin and so all the decor from the sun loungers to the towels was
incredibly stylish. There was also an adults only section of the beach and a very cool bar serving the likes of lobster rolls for lunch.
It was pretty hard to tear ourselves away from this idyllic setting each day. Alternatives to the beach were the adult only pool, with its stunning views over Spinalonga, or the large family pool inland. Both pools were beautiful and neither ever seemed crowded. There were plenty of families here although we visited outside school holidays. The parents raved about the well resourced kids club which entertained the children all day.
We went a bit later to breakfast (served until 11) and to dinner, usually about 8.30pm, and so did not really come across many children during our stay. The hotel has a full on spa with every treatment imaginable. There is also a full programme of Pilates, yoga, stretching and general fitness classes free of charge and at different locations throughout the grounds. There was the most stunning outdoor gym, shaded with views out to sea- I don’t normally frequent the gym on holiday, but I found myself enjoying the setting so much, I couldn’t help but take advantage of the facilities.
The food was very good. We ate in its fine dining (Michelin Star chefed) Greek restaurant, Makis, on the first evening. The service was impeccable and the food delicious. We had fresh local fish tartare and a local bacon and egg salad to start and grouper and local pork to follow. All four dishes were exquisite. The puddings were local Cretan mythizra tarts which literally melted in your mouth. The second evening we ate in their seafood restaurant, La Plage, with the waves lapping at our feet. We had calamari, sea bass and the best seafood saganaki we had ever tasted. The wine was excellent with every meal and we tried a lot of Greek and Cretan sparkling wine, Doloufrakis, which we loved. Breakfast was a joy- on a sundappled terrace, with a choice of international and Greek specialities it was a real job to hold back and save some space for later. We also ate at Blend, which is a steak and wine restaurant. We had one of the house steaks which was skirt and it was perfectly cooked. We also tried the Cretan pasta with shellfish which was unique and a real hit.
All the rooms have pools or jacuzzis and are incredibly comfortable with large balconies. The service wherever we went was exceptional and screamed 5 star. Room service arrives in
minutes with anything you request and the buggies come to your door within a few minutes of calling them. We tore ourselves away from this 5 star luxury to visit the island of Spinalonga, which we had been looking at right across the water from Domes and which was made famous by the book The Island by Elizabeth Hislop who described life on the island during the decades it was used as a leper colony.
We could have taken a water taxi from the hotel jetty however walked the twenty minutes of so in to the pretty village of Plaka and took a cooperative ferry from there. The boat journey is barely 5 minutes bit as you approach the island you get a sense of its isolation, both as a fortress and as a leper colony. It was built as a Venetian fortress and later occupied by the Ottoman Empire for almost two centuries before being designated as a keeper colony. Having read The Island, it was quite eery to walk through the dark tunnel from where the boats dropped you off which was so well recounted in the book. And other sites such as the Main Street and the hospital which feature so largely in the story were very reminiscent. There is an audio guide and some of the old buildings house exhibits on the whole islands history. It is a fascinating visit.
When we got off the boat We stopped for lunch at the excellent family run Taverna Spinalonga at the far end of Plaka village for a fix of dakos (a Cretan salad with barley rusks
and tomatoes and the local cheese mythizra), courgette balls and fried calamari. It was great looking out over the jetty with all the comings and goings of the boats.
We ventured down to the hotel area known as ‘Core’ that evening. The walk to that part of the complex is through beautifully planted gardens with stunning flowers and finishing in the
hotels kitchen garden where all sorts of veg were growing in abundance. Core is quite a concept. There is an area which resembles a small amphitheatre and on the night we visited
there was entertainment for children in the form of two vividly dressed characters with a giant bubble machine. The kids were dancing and having a ball. The restaurants there are in the form of food trucks offering ‘street food’ of various types which you order and is brought to your table – the choice looked to be pizza, giros, Mexican and Asian. It looked really good fun and reports were that it was delicious.
We said goodbye to Domes and headed out to explore the region. We drove back up behind Elounda thorough some of the countryside of eastern Greece which was verdant and lush
and peppered with small villages. The first stop was the historic site of Lato, a Dorian capital settlement dramatically straddling two hilltops and one of Crete’s best-preserved Classical cities. It was one of the city states in the region and was an impressive set of ruins. Walking through the gate and climbing the steep main street, with ruins of stores and shops and dwellings on either side it was impossible not to imagine what life was like thousands of years ago on this remote place overlooking its port of Aghios Nikolais in the distance. There were hardly any other visitors which made it perfect for exploring the remains of such a civilised society in terms of its organisation and amenities – magistrates, a theatre & basilica.
Our second stop was to visit the church of Panagia Kera just outside Kritsa where some very fine 13th century Byzantine frescoes in Crete are to be found. They were stunning and remarkably not painted by professional artists, but by local inhabitants.
We went on to visit the charming village of Kritsa, with its panoramic views over the sprawling olive groves towards the sea and Aghios Nikolaos. It has a charming shopping street with bars and restaurants nestled into the shade. We had lunch there at the Agadiko Taverna – a perfect combination of fava (yellow split pea dip), fried courgettes, aubergine salad and Greek salad with the speciality of the house- snails cooked in vinegar!
Then on we went to our second (and final) hotel the Elounda Beach Hotel. What an oasis of calm this was. It is the first hotel in Elounda, built in the early ‘70s and spanning a massive site with beautifully cultivated mature gardens. It is a beautiful hotel and oozes tradition. It entertains the rich and famous (Cristiano Ronaldo is a regular), but is very unfussy and welcoming.
The rooms are large and spectacular – ours had a (shared) infinity pool overlooking the sea which made you catch your breath every time you entered the room. There is a nautical theme throughout the hotel (apparently the owner loves boats!) and wooden decor is in evidence. Everything is comfortable. We were allocated an umbrella and sun beds in the beach which were ours for the stay and meant we did not run the lottery of having to find sun beds every day. The beach is pretty and quiet and the beach attendants very attentive.
It was really hard to tear ourselves away from it at the end of each day. We visited Aghios Nicklaus one morning and spent a fascinating hour in the newly renovated Archaeological Museum which had many artifacts from eastern Crete up until Roman times. There were artifacts from Lato which we had visited a couple of days before and more detail on life there which was really interesting. Wandering around the pretty shopping streets in the town we couldn’t resist buying some woven blankets for our garden. And some Mythos printed T-shirts as souvenirs. We stopped at the bakery in Elounda on our way back and had some tasty cheese and spinach pies- the Greek equivalent of a sausage roll! The village/town of Elounda is a pretty place, with fishing boats in its harbour and an especially attractive narrow street of restaurants hugging the water.
We ate spectacularly at the Elounda Beach hotel- every night a different restaurant – the Italian Argonaut was fab – smoked burrata, Vitelli tonnato, Dorado fish and another seafood pasta. The Asian restaurant, Blue Lagoon, had superb sushi and sashimi, but the stars of the show were the crab tempura bao buns and the miso slow cooked slow fish. The Greek wines and especially the sparking wines were delicious and we enjoyed the spectacular panoramic views from the Verghera bar, which juts out on a promontory into the sea.
We tried the Greek restaurants – all three. They were superb. One night we ate at Thalassa, their speciality Cretan seafood restaurant. Perhaps one of our favourite dishes of the trip- a starter of octopus and fava bean dip, followed by ceviche and local fish. Kafenion had the best lamb chops as well as all the other excellent local Cretan specialities. And we had a delicious beachside lunch at Ariadne – their mezze and dips were quite superior.
On our last day we took a long diversion on the way to the airport – the Lassithi Plateau. Set high up in the mountains, the drive is spectacular, this almost Alpine plain surrounded by soaring arid mountain peaks is a world away from the nearby beach resorts. A really productive agricultural area it can get very cold in winter with snow of up to 50cm. It is well watered and the villages are all based around farming, and day trippers from the coast. One of the main stops is the Dhiktean Cave, the birth-place of Zeus, although it has been shut for a few years are they complete renovations. One site we didn’t manage to get to was Karfi, set high above the plateau. This is regarded as the very final settlement of the ancient Minoan people who had been the most famous inhabitants of Crete. Finally we headed back to the coast and stopped for a cheeky little last lunch about 10 minutes away from the airport at Spiros’s Taverna in the village of Gouves. It was a little feast of fried courgettes, fried cheese and a last fava bean dip – an amazing bargain at E30 for two.
We left Crete, very rested and very full, already planning out next trip there– probably further east of the island. We thoroughly recommend Elounda as a destination for those looking for a rest, with plenty of sights within easy access to break up the beach time and rather excellent food. We would highly recommend both the Domes of Elounda and Elounda Beach/Bay hotels. These last two have been some of our most popular hotels in the last couple of years.
by TMS