Or, 24hr Tula as the holiday was nicknamed. Our first visit to the once party capital of Crete, Agios Nikolaos. Ag Nik was the first tourist town in Crete and was considered quite a posh resort for a while, until Malia became the place to go. We were staying a little way out, I think it was about a 1k walk to the town, but it was a beautiful seaside road so it didn’t seem to matter really. There were some excellent restaurants in town, but one of our favourites was just by the apartments, I have a feeling it was called Hercules or something similar. The owner was a very generous man, and gave us quite a few free drinks and, when we asked if he could sort out getting some jelly for us for one night, he sent me to see the chef down in the kitchen.
The chef spoke some English, but not fluent & my grasp of languages is well known, but, I did ask her if she could make some jelly for us, not something she was familiar with, but my perfect description – cold, fruit, wobbly – brought an expression of recognition. It seems that ‘jelly’ is ‘zelly’ in Greek. But it took my great acting skill to get her to realise what I was asking for. Still, we got our zelly, and very good it was too, proudly displayed in large glass dishes for us. So we stayed there for another few hours to celebrate the zelly.
So, let’s talk about the accommodation, for most people everything was absolutely fine and comfortable, but some of us were less so. With six of us together in a two bedroomed flat, me & Kate in one room, Sarah & James in another and Cuss & Carl in the front room. No door, no privacy and nowhere for Carl to escape from Cuss’ heavy snoring. Cuss used to snore like a gargling dragon, buildings shook and any small children within a 2 mile range would hide under the bed fearing the worst, and poor old Carl was ‘sleeping’ within inches form him with no escape.
We decided to hire some cars and go for a drive out into the hills and plains of the Cretan countryside. We got lost looking for the birthplace of Zeus. But, as luck would have it, we had a lighter with a map of Crete on it and managed to navigate our way back to civilization using a drawing approx 2 inches wide. I’m not going to be throwing blame around as to who said what about where we should go and how we got lost, but James was driving so….
We booked for a hovercraft trip to Santorini for a day out, which turned out to be a car ferry that took hours rather than a super swift hovercraft. Which the travel company said was perfectly acceptable when we complained. Santorini is very beautiful and not as overtly touristy as I expected. The doughnuts ‘as big as yer ead’ were memorable, but saying all that I don’t think I’d want to stay there for longer than a day, I’d get very bored very quickly.
Oh yea, I nearly forgot, 24hr Tula. Tula was the lady who ran the apartments, and the bar and cooked the food and cleaned. We discovered she kept a mattress behind the bar so she could have a nap when it was quiet enough for her. There was never anything too much for her, as she often said “no problem, boys, no problem” an absolute star.
