Another night out in Iraklio

After we'd pottered around in the afternoon and checked out the shopping in Iraklio - include a mammoth session trying on new sunglasses - we had a spot of lunch. We stopped at a little eaterie on the junction of Handakos and Kidonias called Prassein Aloga, where we had an absolutely gorgeous smoked salmon and roe salad between us. We then went back to the hotel in order to nap, freshen up, and get ready for another night out on the town in Crete's capital city.

We'd spotted quite a few bars we wanted to visit of Handakos street, so headed for that general area. It was also near the couple of bars listed in our guide book that we fancied visiting. However, true to our usual travelling form we couldn't find the two bars listed in the Lonely Planet guide, and so started our evening with some sangria at Habanero.

This was a central/south American styled bar, where the staff seemed frankly astonished to have touristy customers so early in the evening. One half was quite dimly lit with flags of central and south American nations, and the other half was an open-air courtyard. Everybody in there seemed to be speaking Spanish. We had a pleasant drink and then moved along the street to our next stop.

This was a place called Utopia, which was a cafe/tea-room/bar type thing. We got to sit in some expansive sofas on the street. The cafe actually owns two buildings on opposite sides of the street, one of which was decorated with a beautiful old gramophone player. We had a couple of beers here, and noted that they specialised in doing lots of varieties of teas and coffees, so vowed to drop into there for 'afternoon tea' the next day.

Finally we went to eat, and made our way to The Mexican Restaurant on Handakos. We both had burittos, which were nice, but like most "spicy" food we have encountered in Greece, were nowhere near as spicy as you would expect to eat back in the UK. The mood in the restaurant was a bit mixed, it gradually began to fill up, but when we first arrived we were the only punters, and with a fuzzy TV in the corner churning out UEFA Cup football it didn't quite have the kind of ambience we had been expecting.

I have to confess that fully stuffed with Mexican food, our plans to booze the night away fell into disarray, and we retired hurt early. We stopped in our hotel bar for a swift final drink, and I delighted the barman by asking him to switch the TV over from some bland programme or other to the Panathinaikos UEFA Cup game. He couldn't move to get the remote controls fast enough.