Chania Prefecture, Crete Island

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From Chania bus station i caught the 08.30 bus to Paleohora. Fare was 13 euro return. Leaving Chania on the north coast of Crete the bus travels through the holiday resorts in the flat country side till it reaches the mountains. Terrific scenery, the bus descends into Paleohora. A small town with lovely scenery and beach. The bus returned at 1200 or 18.00. Paleohora is on the south coast of Crete in the sea of Libya. This trip was in May 2007.

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Paleohora is a place you must visit while on Crete. The village has a laid back feel with numerous activities for people of all ages. Your days can be filled with hiking, snorkeling, swimming and/or working your tan at the beach, and shopping for handicrafts. There are also opportunities for SCUBA and eco-style excursions. The Small Garden restaurant was one of my favorite places to grab a nice dinner. Third-Eye Vegetarian Restaurant is another excellent option and often offers life local music. Camping and hotels are available for an overnight stay.

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The White Mountains (Lefka Ori) make up for the largest and most impressive mountain range in Crete. They're not really high but look wonderful, especially on the blue sky background. The tallest peak is Pachnes (2453 m).

I wish I could visit one of those tiny peasant houses down there some day...

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A nice village with lovely sandy beaches. It hosts (probably) the only vegetarian restaurant in Crete. Paleochora is easily accessible both from land and sea. It's quite popular among tourists.

At present Paleochora is rapidly growing to meet tourists' demands.

Come to Paleochora and enjoy its pleasant atmosphere, the beach and the views. And the vegetarian restaurant ;-)

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The way to Kastelli Kissamos (love the sound of that name) took us through lush scenery, though those yellow scrubs actually were spiky in spite of their soft look. We had to slow down when some sheep and goats were on the road and acted like we were interfering them! But then we were on holiday and were in no hurry...the sun was shining, it was warm, scenery could not have been better and there were no other people in sight....just perfect!

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We hired a car for three days and headed for the south (Kalives is in the northwest part of the island) and drove through the mountains and three different zones. First through the olive groves, then bare mountains with very small bushes and hardly any other plants and finally to the area where pines and other dry soil plants grow. We were amazed that within such a short distance (less than 100 kms/65 miles) there were so many different sceneries. We reached the small town of Hora Sfakion and headed o the Samaria Gorge. We knew that we couldn't go down there, because after the winter there was too much water and mud, but we wanted to see it at least. We also knew that my sister in her wheel chair wouldn't be able to get there. We drove upwards around the mountain and the road was quite narrow, but I wasn't afraid. The view from the mountains was absolutely breathtaking! The road got narrower and narrower and finally ended - we were lost! We turned back and stopped by a house and I went to ask for the road. The young girl knew some words of English and she said that one can only get there by boat. At least I thought so. We had a packed lunch on the field and continued our trip. We stopped to ask an eldery lady for the road and used sign language and showed the map and she asked us: "Don't you speak English?". What a relief! She confirmed that there's no road to Samaria Gorge from there, only by boat, so we drove back to Hora Sfakion, where we swam and did sun bathing. In the shallow sea it was quite warm to swim and we really enjoyed it.

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After my daily morning walk we headed towards to Kastelli Kissamos. We stopped for ice cream in a small picturesque village and we were disappointed because ice cream they had was exactly the same as we can buy here in Finland (I noticed the same last year when I was travelling in Europe that they sell same kind of ice cream everywhere and I'd like to taste the local ones. In Bulgaria they seemed to think that my friend and I were crazy because we wanted Bulgarian ice cream, though they had fine western ones, too!). Next stop was the monastery of Gonias, which was quite nice, but nothing really special. One of the brothers told us about the monastery and he asked my son about his name and held his arm around his shoulders. Poor boy whose shoulders were burnt!

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my son wasn't vat the time very fond of sitting in the car and Monday had been a long day, so on Tuesday we stayed in Kalives, when my sister and her partner left for the eastern part of the island. In a way I would have liked to go with them, but when I saw how much my son enjoyed his day with me I didn't have any regrets. What did we do together? We went swimming three times, we went shopping (my son used to love to go shopping, when we bought something for him, but when I chose the post cards he got bored though it didn't take more than 10 minutes) and took some walks in the surroundings. My son bought two Finnish lures there and a computer game, which he played in the patio of the hotel, while I wrote some cards. It was a nice, lazy day, and I enjoyed it, though I thought I wouldn't have liked that kind of day. Through Kalives runs a small river, in which water is very clear and we watched fish swimming there every time we crossed the bridge. My son used to like fishing and was interested in everything which has something to do with fishing. I don't know what fish they were, but they were dark and rather big and seemed to be "talking" all the time! There were also some eels in the river and ducks and other birds swimming there.