Chania, Crete - A Hidden Gem!

Today we had no plans, in fact we weren't sure we were even going to bother getting off, but in the end we were so glad we did!

The town put on a shuttle bus from the port in Souda to the quaint town of Chania. One way 1 Euro 50, 3 Euro roundtrip. A bargain 20 minute ride!

We arrived somewhere in Chania, in a square with very loud cretan music I could well have done without while trying to fathom out exactly where we were using the ships map. We could just as well have been using the Mykonos map for all the good the Chania one did us! In the end we just followed everyone else.

We found a street full of leather goods, wallets handbags and old fashioned looking briefcases and satchels like you used to see when I was a kid. For all I know they could be the height of fashion again!

Tom spotted what looked like a city wall, or part of a tower, so we climbed up that, through the weeds of the "path", past the beggar to the top where we could get our bearings. We spotted the sea, and came back down and headed for it. The streets were a bit touristy but when we got to the harbour it was much quieter. There were two bits to it, the Old Port which had the glass bottomed boat and day tour boats and the more upmarket Venetian Harbour with yachts and sailing boats, reminiscent of St Tropez in the 1980s, before it got all the megayachts.

We walked all the way around the harbour, the shoreside crammed with restaurants, then around the harbour wall to the tower at the end. It was nice to get some good walking in, even though the path was cobbled and uneven. 

We explored the old port after and even though that was more touristy, we did find a nice restaurant, "Pelagos", for lunch.

After lunch we headed back to the leather street where Tom bought himself a new wallet "for using in Europe", FYI Euros are bigger than US dollar bills.

Chania turned out to be quite the hidden gem and we had a lovely day there!