We’ve never been to Tuscany in Italy, but like everyone else, we’ve seen all the photos and video of the area. It’s an area of outstanding scenic beauty and it’s hard to watch or look at images of the area without thinking “I’d like to go there some day.” Who’d have thought though, that there is a region of this magic island of Crete that looks somewhat like Tuscany? Well, to our minds, there is. We’ve just come home from a four-day break at a modest little AirBnB in Archanes, a few km south of Heraklion, up in the mountains. When we found the place on the website, it looked ideal for what we usually look for in accommodation. It’s small, very much situated among the local residents, peaceful, and yet well equipped for a comfy stay for two people, and within a few minutes walk of the centre of the village, which we prefer to call a town really. The ‘spitaki’ (little house) is in the garden of the owners, who’d lived in it themselves while their house was being built nearby, and it’s up a tiny country lane from the road that bypasses the village, right on the edge of open countryside, where there are vineyards, olive groves, sheep and goats, not to mention some pretty impressive mountain slopes which can be viewed from the property, which sits at the bottom end of a steep valley.

Looking at information about Archanes online, it excited me because not only is it evidently a place full of classical architecture, it also has an impressive choice of places to eat and drink, making it a pleasure in the evening to leave the car outside the accommodation and take the short walk into ‘town’ rather than have to drive anywhere. Getting to Archanes from Ierapetra is easy enough, you simply drive to Heraklion and at the next junction after the airport turnoff, you leave the ‘motorway’ and follow the signs. You rise steadily on a very good road and, within five minutes the hillsides start to put one in mind of Tuscany. Often, in Greece, people don’t tend to build houses too far out from a village, owing to the steep cost of connecting water, telephone and electricity supplies to the property, but as we drove into the hills towards Archanes last Thursday afternoon, we noticed that here there were a lot of such villas and houses, many nestled on hillsides clad with vineyards, whereas where we live it’s all olive groves on the slopes around the village. The vineyards and terracotta-roofed villas made us both say, “this is a bit like Tuscany.” Well, for those who’ve never visited Tuscany, it did anyway. Suffice it to say that the countryside is a joy to look at as you rise towards Archanes, which is only 15 minutes away from Heraklion timewise, but a world away in every other respect.

Some have described Archanes as the most beautiful village on Crete. I couldn’t go that far due to not having seen enough of the island yet, but that description certainly leads one to expect a lovely experience from visiting the place, and we were not disappointed. We actually had reasons for being away from the village during most of the daylight hours during this stay, so the photos on this post are mainly shot during the early evening, which explains the light in most of them, but an evening stroll out in Archanes is a sheer joy, and the central square towards the south end of the village is where most of the action takes place during the evening hours. We fully intend to spend another long weekend there some time, and then we’ll explore the place during the daylight hours, as well as take some walks in the surrounding countryside.

On our last day in the small house where we were staying, I arose early, to the sound of a couple of sheep bleating behind the farm gate right across the road. In fact, the road in which the house is situated peters out and becomes a dirt track just metres past the front gate. There is no through traffic there, only a few farmers with their pickups and the residents of the few houses that dot the lane between where we were and the main road ever use the place. I opened the small window in the side wall and looked straight out into a secluded olive grove, where the swallows were swooping, catching their breakfast on the wing. They were probably catching breakfast for their young in their nearby nests too, I’d imagine. Above the grove the steep slopes of an impressive mountain rose and shimmered in the early morning light. You know, there are some moments when everything’s just perfect, if you know what I mean. The light is crisp and sharp, the sky a wonderful shade of blue, and up there where we were, owing to the higher altitude, there were early clouds floating by too, moisture being lifted by the first rays of the sun.

Such moments, whether they’re early morning or early evening when the sun’s just about to go to bed for the night, only last for a few minutes, and you can easily miss them. But if you catch one, and you can sit and simply look and listen, it can induce such a deep feeling of calm and wonder, it really can. Each evening, as we watch the hills across the way from our veranda at home, there comes a moment when the valley floor is in shadow, but the slopes above are still bathed in the late rays as the sun begins to sink to our right. That’s when the light is so clear it’s razor sharp, and the glow of the sun’s rays turns the slopes slightly orange, and you can see it for maybe ten minutes, that’s all, then it’s gone until the next day. Well, that early morning moment as I gazed out from the window of the little ‘spitaki’ where we were staying, brought me a sense of absolute contentment for maybe five minutes, and then I made our breakfast.

So, here is a gallery of photos, all taken in the evening as we walked into Archanes for our meal. The first below was taken just 50 minutes after the one at the top of this post, and it was taken at the same spot in the square as we sat and tucked into a delicious meal…

Our hosts at the little AirBnB house were a young couple, Eleni and Stauros, along with their two-year-old son, who was, as you can imagine, into everything. On our last evening they invited us over for a glass of wine (Stauros makes his own, all organic – he’s proud and very quick to point out) and some fresh grapes from their vines. “You won’t get a headache tomorrow from this wine!” Stauros emphasised, while topping my glass up again. We enjoyed a lovely conversation with the two of them, and, as we rose to leave, they said, “Wait! You must take some wine home with you.”

Imagining they’d maybe give us one bottle, we couldn’t believe it when they gave us two bottles of white (1.5 litres of each) and a same-sized bottle of red, plus a bottle of their own olive oil and a bag of grapes in which there was enough fruit to actually make a few bottles of wine if we’d wanted to! They have a machine for sealing the bottle-tops, so when you open them you need to break the seal around the top, just as you would when buying a bottle of water at the local store or kiosk. This assures you that it’s fresh and untampered with.

Above: Two white, one red and another of oil. All as a gift from our hosts. And there are people who think all-inclusive is the way to go.

All in all, we were totally delighted that we found that small house on the AirBnB website. I can’t recommend it enough if you’re a couple and like to stay ‘small.’ It’s here by the way, if you want to take a look at it. We’ll certainly be going back as soon as we can.

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