It’s already a fortnight since we got back from our two-week stay in Sitia. The summer’s slipping irrevocably over us here, and we’ve now taken the duvet out of the cover on the bed at home, as it’s just too warm. I wanted just to add one final word about our stay in Sitia, and it has to do with the accommodation that we stayed in.

The studios, one block back from the yellow sandy beach to the south end of the town, are called Emmanouela. I’ve been reading reviews about them, which I also did before we booked to stay there, and I feel that some are rather unfair. I don’t know why I should worry, because the place still ranks quite nicely in the plus/minus columns, but some criticisms are unjustified. Our own impressions? We loved it. OK, so the location isn’t as attractive as some places, as the building sits in an area where the ‘tourist’ part of town merges into the functional, retail and trade area, but it is only fifty metres from that beach…

Emmanouela Studios are run by an elderly ya-ya called Maria, who’s five foot nothing, has a face that betrays years of being outside under a Greek sun and short, frizzy hair dyed a peculiar shade of ginger. She spends most days pottering around in the garden, which consists of a large area of gravel which surrounds the building, and a raised bed that runs the length of the perimeter wall, where basil grows in abundance, along with assorted other herbs and flowering plants. Maria often wears one of those huge peaks to shade her face from the sun, but which isn’t part of a hat, it’s merely attached to an elasticated band that fits around the head. She has a granddaughter, and it’s she who bears the name Emmanouela. She it is who sits behind the desk in the small Reception office and taps away at the keyboard, confirming bookings and generally running the admin side of the business. Emmanouela is a lovely, personable young woman of around 25-30 years of age, maybe younger.

The studio that we stayed in was ridiculously cheap by today’s standards, and so one must always bear that in mind when rating a place. You can’t expect five star luxury when you’re paying what we paid, but for all that, we had precious little to gripe about. OK, so they could have changed the bins a little more often, but we’re well able to take our rubbish to the nearest street dumpster and re-line the bathroom and kitchen bins with new bags. Maybe the floor could have been mopped a tad more often, but we’ve stayed in places over the years where you were lucky to find one toilet roll in the bathroom when you arrived, and from then on you had to buy your own. There were five in the bathroom of our studio apartment when we arrived and another was added during our stay. We had a small kitchen area, a good quality kettle, hot water on demand and reliable wi-fi. The sheets on the beds were spotless and changed once a week, which as far as were concerned was easily often enough.

I’d telephoned a few days before we were due to arrive to ask if there was hair dryer in the room, and was assured that there was. When we got there to find that there wasn’t one, I popped down to Reception, where Maria and Emmanouela were at pains to get one out of the cupboard, again a decent quality product still in its original box, which they gave to us for the duration of our stay. It didn’t take us long to get used to greeting the two women most days as we were either leaving or returning to the room. There was also a cute and fairly timid tiny little dog that would follow Maria around while she pottered and sleep on a chair on the terrace outside the front door of Reception during the nights. He was a sweetie who at first wouldn’t let us near him, but soon got used to us and became accustomed to having his head ruffled when we came by.

The windows and doors were of good quality white-finish aluminium (uPVC is rare here, as it can’t take the high temperatures of a Greek summer) and when they were closed they were very effective in blocking out any noises from outside. While we were in residence there were still fairly extensive works going on to improve the drainage in the downtown and beach front areas, and there were diggers and piles of gravel just across the road from our veranda. It was in October 2022 when a devastating storm wrought havoc in Sitia, filling the town knee-deep in brown mud, much of which flowed over into the fishing harbour too. We had a break there back in May ’23, and were astounded at how they’d cleaned the place up. So much so that if you hadn’t seen the newsreel footage of what happened only months earlier, you wouldn’t have believed it.

Works being carried out now include fitting lots of storm drains to the streets to hopefully allow water to drain away faster if such a storm should ever come again. It seemed to us that they still had a couple of months work to do before the project was completed.

I often harp on about the beauties of ‘staying small,’ and it’s primarily because it’s by far the best way to really experience a country. OK, so we live here anyway, but going to somewhere else for a break still makes us temporary tourists, and we don’t get excited by the idea of being surrounded by either our own compatriots, or a selection of French, Germans or Scandinavians over our breakfast, around a pool, or during the evening meal. No insult is intended to those people, but when we want to experience Finland we’ll book a holiday in Helsinki, not a pretty little seaside town in Greece. Once again I can illustrate the little moments that make staying small special. One day, as we returned from our morning stroll along the waterfront and had spent a pleasant interlude people-watching over our Freddos, as we began to climb the stairs to the door of our apartment, Maria emerged from the rear door of Reception and called to us.

She was excited to give us a small gift of something that she’d made…

Those little beauties aren’t jam tarts or scones, they’re Kalitsounia, and if you want the lowdown on them then click that link for all the gen. It’s very rare that we’ve ever stayed anywhere and not been given something like this. We’ve taken ‘small’ accommodation holidays in Kefallonia, Paxos, Corfu, Poros, Skiathos, Thassos, Samos, Symi, Halki, Leros, Naxos, Patmos and a few others too, and always had the same experience. The landlords want to give you things. It may be something that they’ve cooked or baked, it may be something to drink, but their hospitality traditions demand that they make you feel welcome, and it usually works. If you’ve never taken the plunge and always searched for the luxury of a hotel, take my tip and take the plunge. Try staying ‘small,’ and then compare the experience. At the very least you’ll go home actually knowing what country you’d been staying in.

Here’s one final batch of photos from Sitia…

When we got back home on the weekend of May 4/5, we were soon tasked with rescuing the garden from drought. Everything needed watering. While we were pottering about – me with a hosepipe and Yvonne with some secateurs – in the lower garden, just across the lane from Evangelia’s house, she came out to the end of her lane and caught sight of us.

“Aax, paidia!!” She called out, “Where have you been? We’ve missed you? We wondered why we haven’t seen you. Is everything all right?”

We, of course explained where we’d been. Tell you what though, as Frank Sinatra once sang, “It’s oh so nice to go travelling, but it’s so much nicer, yes it’s so much nicer to come home.”

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