Day 7: Bees, Breeze and randy waiters
I realised after finishing Bridget Christie’s A Book for Her on the beach today that the title is a play on the title of her award-winning show A Bic For Her. I gave it back to Siggy, so she can swap it for another from the hotel’s collection.
We went to Vatania for lunch again. I had anchovies the size of sardines and shared a Greek salad with Siggy who had a cheese and turkey toastie. Nothing much of note happened today which was nice. It was around 30C but felt okay because the breeze has picked up.
There were a few annoying people on the beach and being rude at the hotel but it’s par for the course really. I think they were German. They looked German. You learn to rise above it.
We went to the old town and found another alleyway taverna near Hotel Leo called (if you can read Greek then please let me know what this says!):
I had briam – which is a simple traditional vegetable casserole – and Siggy had some lamb chops. Bill-freeby was chunks of honeydew melon.
We listened to a busker make every cover he did sound depressing and an ex-RTL TV woman sitting at a table nearby get all philosophical with one of the waiters after several glasses of wine. The waiter had an embroiled emblem of a bee on his tee shirt which links to Knossos but also I think is the symbol for the city of Manchester. The flirting between diner and waiter seemed to intensify as the night progressed, culminating in a bit of discrete post-bill kissing. Allegedly.
We’d given it a few days so we went back to the rock bar to see if they were playing Faith No More yet.They weren’t. I’d even worn my Pink Floyd ‘wish you were here’ tee-shirt. So disappointing.
We wandered over to DelAnte by the little port and with a view of the lighthouse for more cocktails, to escape the competing music and enjoy the nice breeze coming off the sea. However, the price of the cocktails put us off a bit. Seemed like we were paying a premium for the location, so we had beer instead. Some people were doing shish pipes and it was all quite relaxed compared to the rock bar’s location.
We listened in on another randy waiter trying to get some Belgians to go to a club with him. We were undecided as to whether he was just a super-friendly kind of guy or a bit pervy. I guess we’ll never know.
A roundabout is nearby. I took a photo from the balcony outside the toilets upstairs:
Day 8: Mini golf and Leona
Today was another beach day mostly spent reading Lee Child Past Tense. I was three quarters of the way through by the end of the day.
We had a look through the hotel book collection this morning and if you needed any further clue that the hotel is predominantly used by Germans then it’s here – hardly an English language book to be found. Ah-ha! But I did find Nomad by Alan Partridge, so all wasn’t lost. Siggy started to read it later in the holiday.
We had lunch at Costa Costa – I had a nice pasta salad with feta and sun-dried figs and Siggy had a wrap. Then we had a go around their mini-golf course (4.50 each). We were terrible at it. Siggy won by a shot. We mentioned we were going to get some ice cream and the waiter kindly gave us some for free. And boy does free ice cream taste good wherever you may be, but especially in the Greek sunshine.
The sun was still hot, Russians and Germans rude, Cretans friendly and UK tourists keeping a low profile on the whole. There was nothing much else to report before we got off the beach and back to the hotel which is literally on the other side of the main road. A minute’s walk if you were slow.
We went to Vatania again, this time for an excellent pizza and happy hour cocktails 5 euro – a non-layered White Russian and a Strawberry Daiquiri. Great pizza. Siggy not so impressed with the cocktail. She’s like me and tiramisu when it comes to White Russians. So she switched to a Long Island Ice Tea and I had a Mojito. Bill-freebie was panna cotta again.
After a few drinks it seems that we want to dictate what music places are playing. This time it was Leona Lewis’s cover version on Snow Patrol’s ‘Run’ which got interrupted leading me to say ‘how very dare you’ and ask the manager to cue it back up on Spotify. The same sort of behaviour as at the rock bar a few days ago. A few years ago when we were holidaying in Halkidiki I ended up selecting all the songs on the owners iTunes account essentially DJing the night on his laptop. In that case, I blame the tequila and certainly regretted my behaviour the next day.
We left Vatania before I could cause anymore trouble and dropped in at Costa Costa for cocktails – a pina colada for Siggy and a better mojito than the first for me, with a fruit salad for free.
couchmagpie 