We stepped off the ferry and set foot on the third island of our Greece tour - Crete! Crete is known for its gorgeous beaches, but the island is definitely larger in size compared to the others we had visited so far. In order for us to be able to visit all the places we wanted, we had to rent a car to maximize travel time efficiency. We had to secure an international passport in order to be able to drive, but it was worth it! We were given a small little bright red Fiat and it was my first time driving a semi-automatic vehicle and I thank the Lord for Facetime and a portable wifi dongle because I had to call Harry (my boyfriend at the time) and he was able to guide me through navigating the vehicle! Our first long drive out west all the way across the island to the infamous Elafonisi Beach, known for its pink sand. The roads on the west side of the island were VERY narrow and often hosted only one lane roads, so please please please be careful!
Elafonisi beach, known for its pink sand, was PACKED when we arrived - so we recommend arriving as early as possible to secure a parking spot (we circled quite a few times and got lucky as someone was leaving) and to find a nice space to claim on the beach. This is understandable knowing how popular this beach is. While the sand was more close to a tan with a tint of pink rather than the bright pink color some photos online might portray), the beach was gorgeous nonetheless. The sand itself was again super fine and amazingly soft. I loved running around on my bare feet! The waters were clear as can be and the blue color was so pleasing to the eye.
We wanted to squeeze in another beach before we went back to our hotel, so we stopped by the local market to grab some snacks and drove over to a Falassarna Beach nearby our hotel to watch the sunset. It was encased by mountains on a couple of the edges, and it was a wonderful way to end our first full day in Crete. We definitely wished we had more time to spend here!
Next, we wanted to explore the cute town of Chania. It is a popular town that is not characterized by the typical blue and white buildings that we had seen so far. It was made up of many alleys, tall rustic buildings with balconies, and filled with every color you can imagine - pink, yellow, green, blue, you name it. There were a lot of stray kittens and dogs roaming the streets and the area was quite busy! There is a lot to explore, a lot of restaurants, and again a lot of places to do souvenir shopping. We made time to stop by Rethymno Port to see some pretty boats on the water. For dinner, we stopped by for delicious pasta at Laganon in the town and picked up some ice cream on our way out!
Because Crete was so big, we split our time in terms of lodging on this island. We spent a couple nights near the port where our ferry had landed in the area of Heraklion, and then spent our next couple of nights in Falassarna so we would be near the bigger beaches we wanted to visit (such as Elafonisi Beach). We dropped by Chania since it was conveniently on the way back from Falasarna to the Heraklion, where our ferry was set to take us to Santorini!
Fun tip we learned on a particularly stressful drive through Crete at night: most gas stations in Crete are 1) not self service and 2) closed at ~19:00 (or 7PM). This means that even if you drive up to a closed gas station after hours, all of the nozzles are either locked or do not dispense any gas. We unfortunately learned this the hard way and might have had a mini panic attack since we were driving in the dark, on a near empty tank of gas, on a fairly empty road. Everyone we managed to stop to ask for help did not speak English and google translate failed us miserably. It was heartwarming to know people wanted to help despite the language barrier, but we had a long drive ahead of us with and our tank edging closer and closer to empty. We did run into one car of girls who spoke some English and told us that there was a 24 hour gas station only 5km down the road. We held our breaths and prayed our car would make it that far after a bunch of frantic back and forth driving. We finally made it and learned our lesson — big time. I will never forget that Fiats don’t hold a lot of gas and to remind all my friends to always do your gas station research beforehand.
Goodbye to our stressful, but cute Fiat!