A lemon tree of our own

Cocktails in Elounda

We recently spent a week in Elounda on the Eastern side of Crete, a place we had visited the previous year on our Cretan Road Trip. Whilst we were there we obviously had to check out a couple of the "cocktail bars". The first was the Malibu Bar, which was on the main drag as you approached town.

Although not to be confused with the Malibu Club in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City it nevertheless had quite an 80s theme to it, mixed with football memorabilia, as it had three screens showing sports all the time.

The wall of photographs showed the progressive thinning of the owners hair and a myriad changing fashions. I spoke to him, and he had in fact had the bar for nearly 25 years, and joked about his hair.

He was a friendly enough chap, but since I was only really there for the football we didn't get to sample any cocktail creations. Nor did we get to see the DJ in action - there were stacks and stacks of vinyl LPs at one end of the bar, which put me in mind of the Rock Bar in Chania.

We also tried a place called Bar 74 on the town's main square. We had a sundowner of a 'zombie' and a 'tequila sunrise', which were very satisfactory.

The view looked out onto the main square, where lots of young Greek boys were very busy making a noisy nuisance of themselves on their bikes!

Our third cocktail stop was Katafygio, on the sea-front itself, curiously decorated with shop mannequins. We had a whole selection of cocktails, but the Mojito didn't come up to scratch. We got distracted from the drinks though by a Kingfisher, which seemed to be nesting underneath the boardwalk.

A holiday in Elounda

We recently had a week's "holiday" on the other side of the island. We hired a car and drove to Elounda, to meet up with some of our family who had come over to Crete. We stayed at the Alykes Apartments. These were right on the sea-front, about 500 metres walk from the main town square. To get there and back you had to run the gauntlet of about 15 tavernas and their touts, or you could go on the main road running behind the sea front parade. This was less hassle, but not as pretty, and a lot steeper.

Alykes Apartments was one of the last buildings as you headed out towards the ancient remains of the sunken city of Olous. A thin man-made causeway then linked the mainland with a small island across the water, equipped with a small bridge for boats to pass under, and some broken windmills.

We had a great view from our balcony, looking out towards the famous island of Spinalonga.

It also had a very prominent 'No diving' sign, since the apartment's swimming pool was directly below our balcony. Spoilsports!