Travel: Crete

Crete is an odd holiday for me to write about because what started out as a lovely and relaxing holiday... well, it didn't end that way. We stayed half board at the 5* Sensimar Royal Blue Resort & Spa and shared a private pool with another room.


The hotel was located quite close to the village of Panormo, which is a tiny village (population: 400). There's not much to see or do there as we discovered when we boarded the "little train" and went to visit it. Still, we had planned on having a purely relaxing holiday so this wasn't too much of an issue for us.

I think what makes it difficult is that we really could have been anywhere - we didn't get a sense of Greece. When I think of Greece I think of the Acropolis, temples and beautiful churches. Crete is the birthplace of Zeus, but I didn't get a sense of history from the island only, dare I say it, some quite tacky tourism.

Take Rethymnon, for example. The buildings in the Old Town and the harbour are really picturesque - it's just a shame that most of the buildings seem to be home to tourist shops selling fake designer goods. I did manage to pick up a cute beach bag, some pretty hand-made glass coasters, plus the obligatory thimble (I collect them), but mostly all we could spy was junk.

As for the restaurants... We wanted to try Greek cuisine, but what we found were restaurants with identical, uninspiring menus *and* they were those ruddy awful picture menus. Which brings me to why the holiday ended badly.

On the Sunday night, at a restaurant near the harbour in Rethymnon, I ate something dodgy and ended up spending my last day in bed with severe food poisoning. It made travelling home horrific, and then I ended up becoming dehydrated and was quite ill for a few days after we landed back in the UK - it really was a lousy end to the holiday.

But, I can't complain about the weather (mid 30s and no rain), the company (I went with my best friend from uni) or the hotel, but I would have liked to have got a sense of Greece whilst I was in Crete (and not have been poorly). Sadly, that didn't happen.

What was more sad is that I barely managed to take any pictures because we had planned to take them on the last day... I didn't really want any reminders of me looking like death. But, at least I got a few which is more than I can say for my Dublin trip where the camera was on the wrong setting and I didn't get any! (Still can't believe I did that!)

What's the worst thing that's ever happened to you on holiday? Food poisoning? Lost luggage? Hotel not built? Let me know! xoxo

3 comments

  1. That’s a shame as I love Greece and have been about 15 times. Although it's strange to say, my fav island is Corfu, although stick to the north end, you could also have tried Thassos, Poros, Aegina or Rhodes for the more Greek experience!

    My worst trip was coming back from the south of France, out air France flight was delayed arriving into Paris and we missed our plane to Edinburgh, instead of putting us up in an airport hotel they buses us right out to Disneyland which is about 1.5 hours away by road. The hotel was dire, the food was a buffet (and there wasn’t much left at 11pm) and we had to leave the hotel to get back to the airport at 5am. So not much sleep. The worst bit was trying to get on the 1 bus that turned up. 100 people, a 30 seater bus, no thought of queuing - lets just say my rather large ex had to use his elbows hard to stop me getting crushed. Uhhhh

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  2. I slipped over on the marble floor in our hotel in Turkey - I nearly had to go to A&E! It was like the second or third day that we'd been there. One of the group I was with was a Nurse at a GP's surgery so she was at least able to assess it at first.

    I'm sat there on the floor crying my eyes out. A waiter from the hotel restaurant ran across the hotel lobby to the bar and got some ice. We were at a conference thingy and one of the people there was a Doctor. He comes and pokes my ankle says that its a bad sprain, it needs to stay strapped for the rest of the week.

    It met that when we went to Epheseus I couldn't really explore properly and I couldn't go on the banana boat and I couldn't go swimming til the very last day.

    Although I could walk the stairs were a bit of a challenge. My friends Matt and Phil picked me up and carried me down stairs one day because the lift was out of order lol.

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  3. I think you need to go to actual Greece to get the proper experience. That being said, I LOVE the Greek islands and with two under my belt in the past year I hope to go to Crete and add a third soon. :)

    Worst holiday experience was probably Majorca last year. I think the fact though that I had a car crash in the taxi on the way to the airport, an eight hour flight delay AND a bombing in my resort while there, yet STILL had a great time is pretty damn awesome!

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