We moved out from the UK to Greece in August of 2005, when we settled in Rhodes and remained there for fourteen years. During the last couple of years of our UK residency, however, we had two holidays in South East Crete, our only ever visits here before our move here in 2019. On both occasions we stayed in a delightful little complex of a few rooms and one apartment called Helios Studios and apartments. Check out their website, and you can see how they’ve upgraded them recently to a very high standard. It was a complete surprise to us in many ways when, facing the loss of our rented home on Rhodes, we ended up finding the perfect little property to suit our modest budget just 20km along the coast near Ierapetra and, eighteen years after our second holiday on Crete, we were living within a short drive of the place we’d so enjoyed staying back in 2004.

Since moving here to Lasithi we’ve visited Makrygialos (there are so many ways to spell that name in English!) on a few occasions and, when Mike and Sue, a couple of very close friends whom we’ve known for over forty years, finally got to come out here and spend a week with us in September, one of the obvious places to go with them was Makrygialos. A week’s not long and if you want to seriously relax, not to mention catch up on over a decade since we were last together, then you don’t want to be galavanting all over the place every single day. They’d tried to extend their stay, but hadn’t been able to make any headway with the airline, sadly. They’ll just have to come again next year I suppose.

Anyway, we spent as much time as we could with our friends, including one day when we had lunch out and also ate out in the evening on Ierapetra sea front. First stop in the morning, though, was Makrygialos, where we enjoyed a lovely stroll along the sea front and a coffee behind the little sheltered sandy beach near to the tiny harbour at the west end of the resort. Only as we walked around did our appreciation for how lovely Makrygialos is again blossom after almost two decades. OK, so the place has changed a little in that time, but hasn’t everywhere? Here are a few of the photos I snapped while we strolled around the place. See if you don’t agree that it’s picturesque and still mainly unspoilt…

Needless to say, the photo at the top of this post was also taken during that self-same stroll. After we’d enjoyed a freddo espresso in a cool shady restaurant/bar, we took our friends along the road towards the eastern end of the bay, and in doing so passed the taverna that I’d used in my description of the very place that Jerome had stayed, and his future mother-in-law had married the owner, in my novel “The Crete Connection,” which both of our friends had read and thus were interested (at least they feigned interest!) in seeing.

For our lunch we wanted to head over the hill to the next tiny bay, where there’s a taverna that we’d wanted to eat at for a long time. It’s situated right on the beach at a place called Diaskari. The road leading down to it is narrow and has no edge in places, not for the faint-hearted. Once you get down there, though, you’re rewarded by a lovely little hidden gem. The four of us ate a very acceptable lunch and that included a few beers and other drinks, and the bill for the four of us came to around €32. The weather, although very warm, was a little hazy with some cloud cover, so these photos aren’t as good as they might have been had it been wall-to-wall sunshine with lower humidity, but the only downside of that was the quality of the photos. It had no affect on our enjoyment of the place whatsoever…

That night we ate again at the excellent L’Angolo restaurant on the seafront, ever conscious of a commotion going on in the square just behind us. After we left the table, we sauntered into the square to see a live band giving it plenty of ‘wellie’ playing a Cretan tune (it’s always the twelve-inch version too). This looked promising, and so we drifted along the edge of the seated audience toward the dais, while I shot this bit of video…

It wasn’t late by Greek standards, but as the band finally wound up, they started putting their instruments away. It was around 10.30pm. Granted, the crowd was a bit thin (which was a tad curious, I have to say), so I asked the sound engineer on the desk behind the audience if they were finished for the night, and he replied that indeed they were. Pooey-mooey, but we’d missed all of the show.

Ah well, at least my beloved wasn’t too disappointed, as she prefers to dance to the more general Rembetiko music rather than Cretan, to which she doesn’t know many steps, so at least it didn’t depress her as much as it did the other evening, when we’d happened by the taverna referred to in this post.

When all said and done, we’d had a superb day with some very close old friends. In fact, we’d felt like tourists for the day, and it was nice to regain a little of that old excitement we always felt when coming to Greece for a week or two, taking the day as it comes, and simply enjoying the ambience of this amazing country.

Here are a few more photos from the past week or so…

Above: The olive tree in our upper garden. Last winter may have been too wet for us, but it seemed to have agreed with the olives, which look like rendering a bumper harvest in this neck of the woods this coming November.

Above: Look at this fine fella, eh? He’d fill the palm of your hand. He’s a Mediterranean Toad and they’re always welcome in the garden, because they eat the things that tend to bite and sting us!

Above: On the beach the other day we noticed a pair of sandpipers. They’re rarely seen in such close proximity to this beach and we concluded (although any budding birdwatchers out there may well correct me) that they were ‘mid-migrate.’ They came as close as a few feet to some of the people there and I wished I’d had my little Canon camera with me, because the photos I can take with my phone aren’t of the best quality I’m afraid. Anyone out there know the migration pattern of Sandpipers?

Above: Finally, here’s a blast from the past if ever there was one. It was taken in June ’97, when we took a holiday on the island of Thassos. This is on Xrisi Amos beach. Anyone know it? Of course, my beloved still looks the same, whilst I’ve taken the fashion decision to whiten my hair since this was taken…

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Here’s a postscript to this post: ‘Watch the birdie.’

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