Crete: May/June 2024
(continued)
From the Monastery, we drive to Vai Beach, finding some long-haired goats on (and beside) the road. Vai Beach is a tropical paradise
of palm trees that have been known to exist since ancient times.
After paying €3 to park adjacent to the beach, we explore the crowded beach area. The area is quite commercilased but the trees are
magnificent. We walk to a viewpoint over the beach - reached by a short, but steep, trail.
There are palm trees both on the beach
and on the approach road to the area.
From Vai Beach, we drive back to Sissi by reversing our outward journey, except that we
bypass the road that accesses the monastery at Moni Toplou.
We get back to the hotel at 4:30pm, having driven 234 kilometres. Another excellent evening meal features calamari, after which we
walk to the harbour in Sissi to observe a very pleasant, but not spectacular, sunset. The several bars and restaurants in the village
and around the harbour are busy, although not many look inviting. A nice end to an exhausting day.
Monday, June 10th:
Another sunny and extremely hot day. Our original plan was to visit Krista, which is 10-kilometres to the
west of Agios Nikolaos. The guide book states that the church, to the east of Krista, Panagia Kera, is closed on a Monday, and we
decide to postpone that destination until tomorrow. We are unable to verify this situation on the internet as there is another power
outage, confirmed when we have to get the 'old-fashioned' key to access our room after breakfast.
We decide, therefore, to go
to the Monastery of St George, located not far from Sissi on the New National Road.
We chat to our neighbours in Reception where
they are waiting for the Jet2 bus to take them to the airport. We then follow the bus to the National Road where the bus turns right,
and we turn left to the Monastery.
In the heart of the Selinari Gorge, the Monastery of Saint George was initially constructed in the 16th-Century by a monk who
found an image of Saint George in that location. The old monastery was dissolved in the 19th-Century, while the current convent was
established in 1961.
We park close to a wall near the church, so as to be not too close to the busy traffic. We then explore an old,
very small church, and the surrounding buildings and grounds. There are plenty of visitors to the church, but most stop briefly just
to light a candle.
There is a shop selling only religious items, but we get fresh orange juice in a restaurant adjacent to the road
- from where we can watch the traffic go by.
We spend the afternoon relaxing at the hotel, mainly reading as we sit in the room's patio. This evening's meal is vegetable soup;
an appetiser of chicken with a tuna sauce; a salad of pears, walnuts, feta cheese, greens; pork loin (J), black risotto with shrimps
(D); and a dessert of ice cream cake.
We repeat yesterday's walk to the harbour, but the sunset is poor.
Tuesday, June 11th:
The
heat wave continues and there are more warnings from the hotel staff to avoid the sun and strenuous activity.
We have confirmed
that the 13th-Century church of Panagia Kera, with its wonderful frescoes, will not be open today, but we decide to visit the area
anyway.