Ruins of windmills on the hills above the Lasithi Plain.

As teachers used to say “this is going to hurt me more than it hurts you”. I’m sure nobody wants to read all about my holidays, and I’m not sure I want to write about them but it needs to be done so I can move on, so here are a few thoughts about Crete, EasyJet and other things.

The whole idea of the holiday was to just turn off and relax: no newspapers, TV, internet, work or worry. I left my mobile at home and even the big camera, travelling light with only the bare minimum of technology (compact camera, mp3 player, Flip video camera, e-book reader). It sort of worked, but I now regret not taking the EOS with me.

Everything started well when we found that our flight was from gate 103 which meant, as any aviation anorak will know, that we had to go over the bridge. I enjoyed that. I walked instead of using the moving pavement so I could linger long enough for a plane to go under it. It was just a shame that the plane at gate 103 was an EasyJet one. I can honestly say that I have never sat in a less comfortable airplane seat. I like to sleep through flights but it was impossible on this one.

Everything went quite smoothly though and we ended up at the hotel at about 11pm local time, dropped the bags in our room and looked for the bar where I had a pint followed by a pina colada. If nothing else, this holiday was going to do wonders for my resolution to drink more. By the end of the second day I must have drunk more than in the whole rest of the year so far, although admittedly that was not difficult to do.

About the hotel.

I thought it was fine. A lot of people were complaining about it and, in truth, it was easy to find things to complain about if you wanted to, but I thought it was fine. I think a lot of people were unhappy because they lost sight of two things:

• “All inclusive” does not necessarily mean the same as “all you can eat or drink”
• If the hotel is only costing you about £15 each per day you are not going to get 3 cordon bleu meals every day with loads of snacks and premium-brand drinks inbetween

Having seen a trailer for the Inbetweeners film after booking the holiday I had got a bit worried about staying in Malia and was half-expecting it to be like trying to holiday in the middle of a collision between a massive hen party and a massive stag party, but it was not like that. I’m sure Malia deserves its reputation as a maelstrom of debauchery during July/August but it had calmed down a bit in September, plus the hotel was not actually in Malia but nearly 2km outside the town, which was great for us.

For the first week we sat around drinking, reading, sunbathing, eating and taking a few walks along the beach up to the Minoan palace and into town. The first walk into town was during the day, which was really hot but the next day we took a stroll at night along a different road and ended up in the nightclub part of town at about 11pm where people were starting to get ready for a night out.

Techno-disaster!

After about a week I noticed that the battery level on my e-book reader was down to two bars. By this time I had read Oliver Twist, PG Wodehouse’s first Psmith book, a Hary Harrison short story and halfway through an EE ‘Doc’ Smith book. I wasn’t entirely confident that it would last until the flight home so I put it on the charger I use for my mp3 player. It turns out that the Sony Reader doesn’t like them. Charging from a computer is OK but the charger just sucks the life out of the battery. The book was totally dead and my massive collection of USB cables was 1700 miles away.

Jayne astride the mighty Kymco 50cc quad

This was not as bad as it could have been because I wasn’t going to be stretched out by the pool reading for a day or two – we had rented a quad bike for a few days!

I know. Renting scooters and quads in Greece is the sort of thing I would be warning our kids against but I was about due a mid-life crisis. In mitigation, I did wear the helmet some of the time although that was more to protect my bald head from sunburn than anything else.

For our first little trip we headed for the Milatos caves as they were only about 5 miles away as the crow flies. Of course we were not flying and by road it must be more like 20 miles the way the roads bend round the mountains, and it was a lot more hilly than I expected, but well worth the trip.

During the Turkish invasion nearly 3000 people hid in the caves until the Turks finally forced them out, killing many and enslaving the rest, so I was expecting big caves. What I wasn’t expecting was that there are no lights, no paths, no handrails, no guides, in fact nothing but dark holes in the rock with bats flying around. Being without torches we couldn’t penetrate very far safely, but what little we saw was impressive and it rewarded the tortuous trek up there.

I wouldn’t mind going back with some torches and long trousers one day. The real shame is that we never visited these places when we first visited Crete with the kids. They would have loved it there, although I’m sure we would have lost Charlie. Even now I’m sure he would not be put off by the lack of lights, and as an early teen he would have been unstoppable.

The chapel in the Milatos caves.

In one cave there is a small chapel built into the rocks, with an ossuary containing the bones of some of the people who had hidden there. A very strange sight after climbing the long footpath up there.

After the caves we went down to the beach at Milatos, which is a charming little place, for a much-needed cold drink, then headed back to base the pretty way.

Even though the quad struggled a bit on some of the steeper roads it did manage to get us up there albeit at speeds below 10kph in places, so the next day we tried a more ambitious destination – the Lasithi plain.

The Lasithi plain is where the caves on a big mountain range all collapsed many centuries ago, creating a large crater. The crater might be high up, but it is flat and fertile and largely given over to agriculture. There are only two ways in through the mountain passes so it has often been a refuge during Crete’s many invasions.

The views all the way up are spectacular, as is the view of the plains when you finally get there. We did a complete circuit of the plains, stopping off in one small town which was very strange. While all the coastal areas of Crete are dominated by tourist-related shops, scooter-hire places and bars showing football and X-Factor, every shop in this town seemed to sell cloth.

We went to a taverna for a coffee and the chap there was very keen to point out that the only other customer was from France. I had noticed that most of the signs and notices around that were not in Greek were in French. Another couple came in and they were French. Then another French couple came in. In side the taverna were lots of pictures of Paris. It was like a little French enclave high up in the hills.

On a stroll round the town we got ambushed by a shopkeeper who was so good at high-pressure sales I felt it would be rude to not over-pay for a couple of traditional Greek shirts. It was a small reward for the entertainment.

Looking down at the Lasithi plain from the pass.

Having been fleeced by a local weaver we continued our circuit and stopped off at the top of the pass where you can look across the plains in one direction or out towards the coast in the other. There is a huge restaurant there with a limited menu. It caters mostly for coach parties I think, and most of them get served the speciality pork chops which were almost as spectacular as the views.

If I ever go back to Crete I am going to go back to Lasithi again, but with more than 50cc to get me up there. I filmed a bit of our journeys on the Flip but I don’t think I’ll put them on YouTube until I have dubbed in some Steppenwolf to cover the high-pitched motor and speeded it up a bit so it doesn’t look like we are crawling.

Actually we did manage to get over 50 a few times which was quite thrilling until I remembered that the display was in kph and not mph.

On the last day of our quad rental we popped along the coast to the village we stayed at in 2009. It was a little depressing. The place where we had breakfast every day had closed down, as had a couple of other places.

The hotel we stayed at was still there and was doing a bit better. Apparently 2010 was hard but this year has been better – mainly because the large hotel next door has stopped being all-inclusive, leading to a lot more custom for all the bars and tavernas around it.

After that it was back to Malia because I was on a mission – to find somewhere to buy a USB cable and to buy one of the head-sized doughnuts that the bakeries in Crete sell.

The next couple of days after returning the bike were a bit overcast to the point of being stormy. No problem. We had our cards and my book was all nicely re-charged. It probably saved us from getting too burned as well.

I thoroughly enjoyed the change of pace and the change of scenery. Jayne enjoyed early morning walks for exercise each day and we had quite a laugh as well. We made friends with a German girl with an extraordinary collection of tattoos who was ‘doing a Shirley Valentine’. The way we met was quite amusing in itself. Jayne had gone off to the bar or the ladies or somewhere and the bar was quite crowded at the time. While I was there on my own a young girl asked if the seat at the table was free so I said yes and waited to see what sort of look Jayne would give me when she returned to find that after leaving me for just a few minutes I was with young female company.

I wasn’t disappointed. If looks could kill she would have been regretting my failure to take out travel insurance, but soon they were chatting away about all sorts of stuff and comparing tattoos.

I would go back tomorrow if I could, even to the same hotel despite everyone there moaning about it. It may not have been 5-star but it was good for the price and the hot water supply was not just good by Greek standards, but a lot better than we have at home.

The trip home was better than expected. Heraklion airport was much less chaotic than on previous trips. The flight was delayed a couple of hours because of public sector strikes and working to rule but that was OK – neither of us were keen to get back in those dreadful EasyJet seats.

As far as I am concerned it was a great holiday and if I did it again the only thing I would change nothing. Except the airline if possible – plus I would have forked out for a beefier bike and packed a USB cable and the DSLR.

Right. Now that’s out of the way I can get back to bitching about the Tories, banging on about prog rock, and all the usual stuff.

The "famous sun beach" near Malia

Well we are back from Crete and alomost ready to face normality again. Although the holiday was only a couple of weeks it has been a lot longer than that since everything has been normal here. Right up until we went away Jayne was still off work recovering, and before that of course she was in hospital for a couple of weeks.Thinking about it, everything was not exactly normal before then since Frankie was still living here until he got his accommodation sorted out. If normality for us is the pair of us snug and alone in our little house and both going out to work then we haven’t had that since January, but we have another day until that condition since we don’t go back to work until Tuesday. We felt we needed an extra day as a buffer between full-on holiday mode and work.

We had a night flight back, which was delayed a bit because of the Greek public sector industrial action and didn’t actually get home until some time after 3am. Since then the washing machine has been going full-tilt and we have been catching up on e-mails, podcasts, Doctor Who and sleep.

I may mention Crete a bit more and share bore everybody with photos and videos, but right now there is still some catching up to do. While we were away West Ham won two games and drew against Milwall, and Crawley Town had a bit of a stumble, letting in 9 goals in two games before winning a couple, so we are already abreast of the important news. Anything else been going on?

Our last overseas holiday was a week in Crete in August 2009. Only two years ago but it seems a lot longer. I can’t remember when we last went anywhere for two whole weeks, but that is what we are just about to do.

The big question is how much technology to take. Certainly not the laptop. That can stay here for the kids to use while they are house-sitting. Part of the appeal of a holiday now is to get away from it all, including blogs, Facebook, Twitter, RSS feeds and email plus newspapers and television. We will probably take our phones if only to use as alarm clocks and to call a taxi from Gatwick when we return but I’ll certainly make sure all the roaming data stuff is turned off.

Can’t totally get away from gadgets though. I’ll take my mp3 player and e-book reader with all the PG Wodehouse that I have downloaded ready for the trip. I might take the Flip video recorder since it is nice and compact but I’m still undecided about the big camera. I’m kind of inclined to just take my compact camera and leave the DSLR at home.

All I know for sure is that after Saturday its going to be pretty quiet here unless the sister posts anything.

The planetarium attached to the @Bristol museum

Jayne and I were very impressed by Bristol at the weekend.  Although I had been there before it was a very long time ago and all I can really remember about it from then is the CLifton suspension bridge.

I knew it was the home of Banksy, Concorde, Johnny Morris and Wallace and Grommit as well as the location for Teachers and Being Human but that was about it.In a way the weekend was a bit wasted as we spent a lot of time wandering and gawping at the place rather than seeking out the places of interest, but that made it a very relaxing weekend.  I enjoyed it in the same way as I used to enjoy free time on overseas business trips, feeling no compulsion to see everything.

We arrived on Friday afternoon after a really hot drive and thanks to sat nav found the hotel straight away, which turned out to be right in the heart of the city: on the waterfront and a short stroll from all sorts of bars and restaurants.  We occupied ourselves exploring the immediate vicinity before having a meal.

Clifton suspension bridge

On Saturday the plan was to go and see the bridge first so I could take some photographs.  We were aiming for the observation point, but took a wrong turn and went over the bridge instead where Jayne inspected the visitor information centre while I walked back across the bridge.

A lot of fuss is made about the design of the bridge, and I’m sure that it is a good design, but faced with such things I am always more drawn to thoughts about the actual construction.

I can see how it works and how it all stays up, but find it hard to imagine how it got there: what was it like when it was half-built?  Jayne will know more about that, having watched the film at the information centre.

It’s a shame you can’t go up to the top like you can on the Sydney Harbour bridge, but even at road level it is pretty high up with some stunning views.

After the bridge we went to Bristol Zoo, since we were in the area.  What a great little zoo that is.  It is not a large place and does not have the crowd-pleasing animals like elephants, giraffes, tigers, pandas and rhinos but it presents what it does have very well.  The different habitats are very well designed for both animals and visitors.

One of the first animals we saw was an asiatic lion.  It looked sad and bored, as big cats so often do in zoos but there was something very poignant about it when we read the notice about how the other asiatic lion died in the last month.  It is easy to over-anthropomorphise animals in zoos, but the remaining lion did look lost and lonely.

Everybody's favourite small mammal - the meerkat

It was another hot day so we didn’t spend as much time as we might have done in the reptile house, butterfly house or aquarium, sticking to the outside areas more.

There was a small enclosure of meerkats, but it was teeming with them.  Honestly I could have stayed for hours just watching them, especially as there were quite a few baby meerkats in there (meerkittens?).   I wanted to take one home, but Jayne said I could only have one if I let her take Jock (the 34-stone silverback) home too.

Actually I didn’t want to steal a meerkat.  I wanted to steal two, just so I could spend my time comparing them…

I really liked the way the monkeys were accommodated.  They were on islands so no need for sheets of perspex or wire mesh to enclose them.  This is great for taking photos.  It does mean they are a bit further away – but I did have my 300mm lens so no problem there.

Jayne's new best friend enjoying a snack

I didn’t see a statue of Johnny Morris at the zoo, though I’m sure there is one.   I was a little surprised to not see him being used to promote the place but on reflection people my age don’t really need the reminder and people much younger wouldn’t know who he was.

The gift shop was quite amusing.  There was a range of model animals on sale which were all the animals the zoo doesn’t have – rhinos, kangaroos, giraffes, african lions, leopards, polar bears, etc.  It was a bit like the end of Bullseye – “here’s what you could have seen if you had gone to a bigger zoo”.

But who cares if there are no pandas or elephants?  It is a charming zoo, and a brilliant place for kids.  You could easily spend all day there.

Although there are no pandas, the zoo does have red pandas apparently.  I didn’t see them because they were either asleep somewhere or are masters of disguise.  I was a little disappointed by that because red pandas are also known as fire foxes, which appeals to my inner nerd.

After the zoo we went out to the countryside for a while, ending up in Yate, and then went back to the city where we spent some quality time sitting by the water watching the world go by and enjoying ice creams.  What an experience that is!   I think if you sit around in Bristol long enough you really will see everything.  We saw a girl dressed as a Rubik’s Cube, a bloke dressed as a Pac Man ghost, somebody riding a double-decker bicycle, and (unforgettably) a bloke wearing a Borat-style mankini.  And this was just in the afternoon – evenings are even wilder.

Even the old bill are quite casual: we saw one wearing camoflage shorts, desert boots and t-shirt, with a Police vest over the top.

If anything Bristol reminded me of a sort of cross between Brighton and Amsterdam.  It has the atmosphere of Brighton but doesn’t seem to work so hard at it, but with the canal-side vibe of Amsterdam.  Students everywhere obviously. And cyclists. And runners.  It felt like more people jog than walk in the city.

The cyclists surprised me a bit though.  Lots of posters proclaim the city as Britain’s first cycling city and it is true that there are bikes everywhere.  I’m amazed that cycling is so common in such a hilly place.  I expect it in places like Cambridge, Copenhagen or Amsterdam that are generally flat, but I would have thought all those hills would make cycling a bit of a chore.  Maybe you get used to it.

One of Banksy's most famous works and possibly one of the country's most-photographed walls

Sunday morning I got up at a stupidly early hour and went out to take some pictures of the city.   I walked up to the Christmas Steps, down past the Council House and cathedral, and then down to the water to see the SS Great Britain and back via the renovated harbour area.

After that I was ready for a huge breakfast at the Weatherspoon’s pub opposite the hotel, though I struggled a bit to eat it all.  After that we checked out of the hotel and loaded the car with our bags and headed for the aquarium.  We wanted to go there on Saturday but were just too late to see the last IMAX show of the day.

The aquarium is, like the zoo, very well laid out.  The route through it alternates between indoors and outdoors – well sort of outdoors – making it more varied and less claustrophobic than the London Aquarium.

There is always a slight disappointment about most such places: loads of interesting tropical fish, seahorses, spooky-looking shark egg pouches, and small sharks – but what you really want is to see great white sharks and hammerheads, which only the largest places have.  Bristol gets round this by having an IMAX cinema showing a 3D shark film.

This was where the weekend fell apart really.  The start of the film was delayed by unspecified problems and then half an hour in, just as it was getting to the hammerheads, we lost the picture and the whole show was aborted.  I sort of got the impression that the bloke from the gift shop was filling in as projectionist.

We still enjoyed our weekend away, but it was a shame to end it on a bit of a low.

The Bristol Hotel from across the harbour

Jayne and I enjoyed a short break in Bristol.  More of that later, but for now I want to praise the hotel we stayed in – The Bristol Hotel.

It is not cheap, in absolute terms, but for a two-night stay we were happy to fork out for a bit of comfort.   Having said that, our stay was not too expensive either because you can get good deals booking weekends at short notice, and some of the facilities were a lot better than I have had at more expensive places.For a start, the location is great.  The building is right on the waterfront of the floating harbour, just along from the Arnolfini.  A short walk across Pero’s bridge and you are in the middle of a whole load of waterside bars and restaurants.  Just around the corner from that is the @Bristol museum and the aquarium.  In fact everythign is within easy walking distance and parking is no problem because there is a multi-storey NCP next door which we stayed in free all weekend as guests at the hotel.

Once checked in, you can use your door key to go straight from the car park to the rooms.  If you have a third-floor room just park on level 3 of the car park and go straight through – no need to go back down and then through reception.

When we checked in we were asked if we wanted a smoking or non-smoking room which knocked us back a bit.  We didn’t know you could still smoke in a hotel room these days.  The last couple of places I stayed were 100% non-smoking, and that is in tobacco-friendly France.

The room itself had a view over the harbour, the softest bed I have ever slept in and a huge plasma TV.  It also had a hair dryer, iron and ironing board.  Not that we were going to be ironing, but its good to have.  There was the obligatory kettle and tea and coffee ingredients but also a Nespresso machine which I fell in love with.  I thought it was neat having a Bose stereo in our room when we stayed in New York, but I would swap a Bose stereo for one of these coffee-makers in an instant.

We deliberately left the laptop behind, which turned out to be a shame becasue there was broadband in the room – not wifi (I don’t think so anyway) but proper wired ethernet.  There was even a CAT-5 cable in one of the drawers.   Next to the TV was a huge range of connectors for the TV – VGA, HDMI and audio/video.  There was even a USB charging socket.

The other connectors were even more impressive: alongside the normal 3-pin plug socket were a European 2-pin socket and a US-style 2-pin socket.  Not any use to us of course, but what a great idea for overseas visitors.  In all the times I have stayed in hotels in the US or Europe I have never seen a UK-style plug socket.  Such a simple thing would have made my stays much easier!

We didn’t even take advantage of a lot of the facilities – like having a free newspaper or room service.

My only criticism would be the over-designed nature of the bathroom.  It took a couple of attempts to work out how the sink tap worked for example, although it looked beautiful.  The shower was brilliant: so good I didn’t even take a bath, which I had been looking forward to.  Probably the worst aspect of the bathroom was its frosted glass door.  Call me old-fashioned, but I like a solid and 100% opaque bathroom door.

If we go back to Bristol again, which is a real possibility because we really liked it there, we will probably stay at this hotel again if we can.

And now for some nerdy photos…

A plethora of multimedia connections

A matching plethora of power outlets

Mind you, I have the challenge of getting myself up every morning which might be the more difficult task…  I have trained myself to sleep through the alarm clock here, only waking when I get yelled at.

No wild parties planned this week, but I will be taking our oldest boy down to Brighton tomorrow for a night out at a comedy club, and maybe I will have myself a James Bond film evening, or crank the stereo up for some of those surround sound SACDs.

I remember the last time we went to Crete and saw somebody that we had met the year before in Corfu.  Or was it the other way round?  Pretty unlikely anyway.

And then there is all the security.  I don’t think it serves much of a purpose except to make nervous fliers even more nervous.  The problem is that it is all so reactive:  everything is designed to avoid the last incident and not the next one.

There is a positive side to it though: there seems to be a lot less hand luggage now.  I remember how you used to find the compartments on the plane absolutely jammed as so many people were travelling with enormous bags as hand luggage and also taking suit carriers, carrier bags and all sorts on the plane with them.  There were supposed to be rules, but everynody ignored tham and the airports were complicit – they provided lots of trolleys airside.  I laways felt that if you needed a trolley airside then you probably didn’t understand the concept of hand luggage,

Still, we got to browse the shops a bit and had a nice large breakfast to keep us going – I had some pancakes and syrup. Proper ones – not the MacDonalds variety.  There was still a lot of sitting around and waiting though.

Coming back was another story.  Heraklion airport has got no better since we last visited, in fact it may have even got worse.  It is a terrible place.  We were quite lucky that it was an early flight home and so it was still dark when we arrived and not too hot.  Also there were not many flights at that time, but that is where the luck ended.

Even though it was more than an hour before sunrise when we arrived, it was already more than 30 degrees at the airport and the queue for our check-in desk was coming out of the doors and onto the pavement.  I still can’t work out whether it is bad design or bad organisation, but it was well over an hour before we had our bags checked in, and we were by no means the last coach to arrive.

Our plane was a 737-800 which seats only 189 passengers, nearly all are in groups of two or four, so maybe only 30 parties to go through each of the two check in desks, but still it took forever – and then you had another (much smaller) queue to put your bag into the x-ray machine before heading off to queue for the security checks.  The notoriously slack Greek security seemed a little thorough than before, but at least they didn’t make you take your shoes off.

No sooner had we got through all that and walked into the duty free shop than our flight was called.   Heraklion airport must lose a fortune through missed opportunities to sell stuff in their shops!   I do grumble a bit that our airports here, like our railway stations, are now seen as giant retail premises with travel almost an afterthought, but Heraklion is going too far in the opposite direction.

Maybe all that would be easier to take if you could at least have a smoke to calm yourself down, but even Heraklion is a smoke-free building these days – yet another way in which Habib Bourguiba airport in Tunisia is better.

Seriously, Crete would do well to sort that place out.  Not only are they missing a fortune in lost revenue from airport shops, but there is a danger of putting people off returning.  We had a fantastic week on the island, but could easily have left with our lasting memory being the chaos involved in getting off it, eclipsing memories of the friendly people, good food and stunning views.  Even just having enough room to queue inside the building would be a vast improvement.

The beach at Kato Gouves in the morning

One of the undisputed pleasures of taking a holiday is ‘getting away from it all’.

This can just mean a change of scenery and getting away from all the familiar places, but I also interpret it as getting away from a lot of life’s daily routine and away from the television, radio, internet, telephone, newspapers and all that.

I don’t even drink tea while I am away.  I drink endless cups of tea at home, but when I am away I stick to black coffee.

It is now getting harder to escape the modern media – or looked at another way it is easier to stay ‘in touch’.  Satellite TV is everywhere, as are internet cafes and wi-fi.  The hotel bar had a PC and also wi-fi but I resisted that temptation.

I remember my first holiday abroad: there was a long queue for the phone booth in the hotel reception and any call home had to be planned.  Back then I couldn’t see the point in calling home, and even now I can’t really.  I took my mobile phone with me just in case the kids burnt the house down or anything, but didn’t use it, except as an alarm clock.

I am already used to not reading a newspaper, having weaned myself off that habit back in February, and didn’t mind at all not seeing any headlines.  I know that if anything really important happened then somehow we would have known: big news finds its own way through.  It appears that the big story of the week was a Tory saying the NHS is a bad idea, so I didn’t miss much.

I did crack on the last day though.  On Saturday evening I got one of the brothers who runs the hotel/bar to look up the West Ham result for me, but on the whole I rather enjoyed the break.

View from up a mountain somewhere a bit East of Agios Nikolaos

Expect a fair few holiday-related posts here over the next few days, even if they are only tangentially related to our hols.  Jayne and I returned from Crete today – our first holiday on our own for ten years (not counting some long-weekend-type city breaks) and who know, there might even be some sister Jane posts about her festival camping experiences.  Can’t remember exactly where it was..  not Glastonbury or Woodstock… I’m guessing Cropredy.

I have finished catching up with the Twitters I follow, recent Facebook updates, and the 700-odd posts on various blogs I subscribe to on Google Reader, and gone through all the e-mails.  Now I am ready to start going through all the holiday snaps.

I may have got carried away…  I have 550 photos from the big camera and 287 photos and a few videos from the compact camera.  I expect to delete a couple of hundred almost immediately – where I was taking several of the same thing just in case, or playing with different settings, or where I forgot the camera was left on manual focus or whatever, but that will still leave quite a lot to catalogue and tart up/crop.

Likely topics are:

• How lovely the Cretans are
• How bloody awful Heraklion airport is.  Still.
• The pettiness, stupidity and futility of so-called security measures at airports
• Photos
• Food
• The simple pleasures of being cut off from newspapers, internets and everything