For those of you wanting to know what the very end of the season is like, here is my report.
We came back on Tuesday from a lovely, peaceful holiday in Plakias. The weather was beautiful, unseasonably so, temperatures in the low 20’s with mostly clear skies and light winds, apart from a couple of windy days, one of which we had booked ourselves on a trip. From the previous comments about September and October being the new high season, I was expecting a few more people around! There were probably around 50 holidaymakers in Plakias. We arrived at about 10.45pm and immediately went out to try to get something to eat. Fortunately the Souvlaki House was still open, as were the supermarkets. Most of the tavernas were in darkness, making us wonder if they had all closed down for season. The next day we discovered that most of them were open, just that they closed once everyone had left for the evening. The latest you could go out to eat was 8pm, but by then the weather was quite chilly anyway, and you wanted to be sitting in a taverna. We were told it has been a very good year for the businesses in Plakias, which is really good news.
Antoni's, Christos, Harakas and Paligremnos (taverna and beach bar, but not apartments) closed up before or whilst we were there. Argo opened up later than in the summer and closed in the evenings. To Kyma and Livikon were both almost empty most of the time. The Youth Hostel closes at the end of October. The sunbeds and umbrellas drastically reduced at the Far End, Paligremnos and On the Rocks beach – there were only a handful of people using the sunbeds on the whole length of the beach. Our habit from the hot August weather is to go down to the beach early in the morning, but we got a bit caught out, as most of the Far End was in the shadow of the cliff when we got there! We set off a bit later after that, to give it a chance to warm up.
Everyone was really friendly, with greetings and discussions about the exceptional weather, even from people in the tavernas we had never used. There was only one taverna where the service was not quite as friendly as previously, but it was okay. I think it might have closed for the season the next day, but it was not one that we walked past regularly, so I did not see.
The last weekend was a holiday weekend, with Oxi Day falling on the Monday. The village was lively during the day on the Sunday and Monday.
We saw Les the Olympic rep off onto his bus for the airport in the morning, and once the Newcastle bus had left at 1.30, we felt like the last survivors! As we were the only ones for our flight we had a taxi transfer at 6.00pm. The airport was chaos. We were on Thomas Cook, but the reps were “off duty” and returning on the flight. A Monarch plane to Gatwick had to return its passengers to the terminal because its air conditioning had broken down. There was nowhere to sit. I used the ambulift because I was travelling with a wheelchair and got delivered to the wrong Thomas Cook plane. Fortunately I asked, as no-one else seemed to have checked.
The trip we went on was with Elena Travel, on Kosta Chrysoulla street – she deserves a mention. She has a 9 seat minibus and runs various trips. At 40 Euros per person it is not cheap, but something we thought was worth spending our money on. We went to the Kourtaliotis Gorge to look at the waterfall coming out of the rocks, Lake Kournas, which at that time of year was very quiet and peaceful, a carob factory (we thought we would see the manufacturing process, but it was a sales pitch in the shop), Argiroupolis, where the springs come down the hillside and have been turned into fountains and other water features (I can imagine it would be relatively cool in the summer but very busy), Lappa, the ancient capital of Crete, and back through the Kotsifou Gorge. There were only 5 of us on the trip apart from “Elena” our driver/guide.
Daza, sorry we did not see off - we were still at the beach when you left I think.
