Hastings Battleaxe sampled Crete

Battleaxe says ‘sampled’ advisedly, because we only saw a tiny fraction of the island. We spent most of our time chilling at the luxurious Elounda Bay Palace Hotel, with just one day out to visit Knossos and the Archaeological Museum at Heraklion. We had intended to do more – but hey, it was very hot and the hotel made us very lazy.

Battleaxe has always wanted to visit Knossos and the Museum, which contains most of the artefacts found at Minoan palaces and shrines in Crete, including Knossos.  Did I ever say I went through a Goddess phase about 25 years ago?  I read a great deal about the Female Divine and assembled a collection of goddess figurines – I still have a good few. Minoan snake goddesses featured significantly.

Elounda is also near the island of Spinalonga – who hasn’t read Victoria Hislop’s ‘The Island’ about the leper colony? Also, I’d read there was good snorkelling nearby – something we have missed in recent years. Then, after all our years of simple living in Turkey, it felt like time to try the other end of the holiday accommodation spectrum, a 5 star luxury ‘resort’.

The Elounda Bay Palace is a beautiful place. Along with its sister hotel, the Elounda Beach, it occupies a large compound about fifteen minutes walk from Elounda village.  Built in 1971, the area was once forest/olive grove, and large numbers of the old trees still survive in the hotel grounds and gardens. The spacious public areas of the hotel still have a 70s retro feel with Cretan overtones – enough to annoy some incredible miseries on the review sites who obviously think luxury equates to steel and glass. The hotel had two private sandy beaches surrounded by grass and trees, a lovely outside pool and a massive indoor pool.

We spent most of our time lying on sunbeds in a quiet corner under the shade of an old tree, but only a few steps from the sea, which was crystal clear, but astonishingly cold. We varied sunbed lazing with interludes at the pool bar for coffee, beer etc.  You could indeed snorkel in the sea – many rocks and fish, and I even saw an octopus – but it was not as exciting as we hoped, and the further you went out into the deep, the colder it got! The swimming arrangement suited me though, because when swimming in the sea I am afraid of boats. The bay was safely cordoned off for swimmers – a very large swimming area – we never even swam out as far as the cordon line. Outside the cordon area, there was much water sports activity, water skiing, jet skis, speed boats etc which would have terrified me if I’d have been swimming near them.

When I booked the hotel I thought we could get easy access to the snorkelling area between the hotel and the village – there is a sunken city called Olos, but it turns out the compound is fenced – to get out you have to go through a barrier at the front, with a man in a hut. Very safe – but not good for eager wanderers, walkers and potterers like Battleaxe and Philosopher. When we did make the long hot trek round to the other beaches, they were pretty scruffy, rocky and dirty looking, so we hadn’t missed anything.  Elounda village was OK, lots of bars and restaurants with pontoons over the sea, quite a few shops, but it was too much of a hot walk from the hotel to venture down there too often. We couldn’t even be bothered to catch the ferry to Spinalonga.

We had booked a luxury sea-view room, which was in a refurbished block of the hotel, and very good it was too – a lovely blue mosaic bathroom, a glass-fronted  balcony with great views and an enormous, very comfy bed.  The catering arrangements were excellent – a big buffet restaurant with a truly excellent range of grub. Every day I womanfully chomped my way through a three-course breakfast – fruit, yoghurt and nuts, then a fry-up, followed by a visit to the waffle and pancake cook. Lunch? Oh what? Ssssh. Then a three-course dinner – starters and salads, meat or fish main course.  The fish chef was very good – lovely whole sea-bass, swordfish steaks. But oh goodness, best of all, the pastry chef was just brilliant. The range and variety of puddings was incredible. When you read reviews of the hotel, there are people who actually say that the food is like ‘canteen food.’ Well, God knows what sort of canteens they must eat in.

The hotel did have several other restaurants but they were expensive – our half-board included the main restaurant. Drinks were very expensive too – a glass of wine was 11 euros.

All in all, if you want that sort of hotel, Battleaxe would recommend. It was fine for us for a few days, but we would have soon got restless.

So, what of our one day out? Knossos was a bit of a disappointment. We knew that the palace had been extensively ‘restored’ by British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans at the start of the twentieth century, and his reinforced concrete reimagining of the palace still arouses controversy. But Battleaxe was OK with that – to be totally honest, the reconstructions added interest to what would be a pile of old stones. And a very large pile at that. The site is massive with very little shade. It was boiling hot and very, very crowded.

We had booked our excursion with a local travel agent, only to find that it was just me and Philosopher, which suited us fine. We certainly appreciated our very nice driver’s air-conditioned mini-bus while crawling through the traffic into the centre of Heraklion – a much bigger city than I expected.  We were dropped off at the Archaeological Museum, and that more than made up for the shortcomings of Knossos. It is an absolutely fantastic collection of Minoan art, and would have taken many hours to fully appreciate. Here is information about the Minoans. The artefacts in the museum were so vibrant and lively, the decoration so vivid… here are some examples.

Many items, like the seals and jewellery, were incredibly small and wonderfully detailed. Unfortunately I only photographed one thing, the so-called ‘King Midas’s ring’, which then shows all this detail when the image size is increased. And it was just one item of hundreds… We needed far more time in the museum than we had allowed ourselves. Battleaxe would totally recommend.

Would we go back to the hotel again? Hmm, not sure. I doubt it. There must be loads more lovely places in Crete to explore. Don’t get me wrong, we very much enjoyed our holiday…

Now, here is a mystery to end with. We ate ourselves silly – after all the puddings I ended up every night getting up from the table feeling sick. I dreaded getting on the scales at home – but I hadn’t put on any weight at all, and neither had Philosopher. Why not?