Stallis, Crete, and Koni Village

 Hi,
This is Stallis on Crete,  its a lovely place to go on holiday,  the beach is sand and the blue Aegean Sea awaits you.  It is safe for you to go to Greece on holiday,  nothing has changed on the Islands,  yes they had had trouble on the main land but there is no trouble on the islands.  The tourist season is quite and they really do need the visitors to come.   They are still as helpful and as willing to help the tourist but they are getting to be a very poor nation.   You will find just the same over there as here,  empty shops and restaurants,  not helped by the hotels who have all inclusive holidays,  therefore there are less visitors eating in the restaurants.   
They are going back to the old way of living,  light by oil,  and heating and cooking by wood fires,  why because they don't have enough money,  they also have food banks in Athens just the same as we have here  and they are growing more vegetables on spare bits of land to help those who cant afford to buy food.
This is the beach at Stallis,  with brightly coloured umbrellas the bars and restaurants have sections on the beach and will sever you drinks down on the beach.   There are a lovely lot of shops in Stallis and we became friendly with Maria who owns Irene Shop,  her beautiful embroidered tablecloths, runners, and many other items are really lovely, she only buys the best,   there are plenty of handmade tablecloths that take hours of work.  I should have taken a picture of some of them,  at the moment she is working on a cloth, with gold and red beads and cross stitch and when finished she will put a red velvet edging around it,  it will look spectacluar when it is finished,   it is going to be handed down to her children.  If you go to Stallis please pop in and see her,  and then go across the road to the bar,  they have the most comfortable seats under Palm fond umbrellas where you can sit and enjoy a drink beside the beach.

 This is Koni Village,  Yes it is that steep,  Vernon missed the bit that said not for the less mobile,   that hill nearly killed me every day.  and this is only the beginning,  there are 10 blocks of apartments,  there are at least five not in my pictures and they are up an even steeper hill,  this was bad enough. There is a church right at the top,  sorry I never got that far up the hill.   The Village has two swimming pools,  one is the other side of the wall down at the bottom,  that is quieter and apart from the noise from the main road,  more relaxing.

Our apartment is the one at the top of the yellow building straight ahead in the picture,  Vernon was not amazed at having to carry the cases up there,  as he had just had physio on his shoulder and it had just got better,  only to undo all the physio by having to carry the cases up,  but once in the room the view was brilliant overlooking Stallis.

View from our room looking down the path of the entrance to the Village and beyond towards the sea.
The town and beach was a walk away a  bit quicker but taking the tunnel under the main road and then down the track,  only about 10 minutes to the beach and a further 10 minutes to the centre of Stallis.

Another view out over.   The restaurant in Koni Village was really good and reasonable,   in fact where ever we eat the food was reasonably priced and good value.    They had a Greek night on the site with a barbecue,  the Greek dancers kept on getting up the guests to dance,   yes I did get up and Vernon had the video camera out.   

View of Stallis


Crete is a lovely island to visit,  there is a wealth of archaeological sites on Crete and a lot to see.   The buses are cheap but the run on GMT,  Greece maybe time,   they can be either 10 minutes early or late but will arrive around the time they say. The main crop is olives and there are olive trees everywhere,  in the winter when the tourists go home the main  work on the island is olive picking.
  We did do a trip to Santorini which I will post another day.  Greece is still good value for money,  but with all the money troubles they have the Greek people we spoke to really do believe they will be going back to the drachma currency (which was there old currency before they joined the Euro) and coming out of the Euro.
We had a lovely restful holiday,  which is what we really needed. I managed to do a lot of tatting, and some knitting before running out of wool. I have already posted some tatting but there is more to come.
I hope you enjoy my post and until we meet again take care,  hopefully summer will return and the rain will disappear.  I don't know about you but I am fed up with the rain,  I am looking forward to seeing the sun again,.
                          Hugs
                       Margaret