Gazi, Crete

Our accommodation was the Petousis Hotel in Gazi. A very nice hotel with pools and friendly staff; the cleanliness of the rooms was still OK. The accommodation is recommendable if you have a rental car available – or for anyone who’s content, for the entire stay, with a range of movement between the sea with its fresh breeze, the lounger by the pool and the nearest restaurant. Overall my experience with the accommodation is good, with a few small catches: With its natural stone walls and its general layout, the complex is architecturally very beautiful. Two large, nicely landscaped pools with spatial separation and the option of finding a quieter spot as well. If you can ignore the deafening noise (“Crete techno”) of the cicadas, the pools offered a whole day of relaxation. The rooms were very modern, e.g. with the option of deciding at the push of a button whether the room should be cleaned or left undisturbed. Until now I only knew the annoying cardboard signs you hang on the door and that tear or fall off. The air conditioners in the rooms (we had two rooms) were very powerful and could also be set very quietly at night.

The large balconies and the interior design of the rooms added to the pleasant living atmosphere. However, the rooms weren’t very clean and I think that’s due to the way they’re built. The rail of the shower door was hard to clean and every guest drags sand into the room. There were also a few ants that came and went in the room as they pleased. On one day, one of the staff apparently tried to drive out the insects in the hallways with a sprayer. That brought back the horror stories about the family who may have died in a hotel in Istanbul because of measures like that. But there was probably no reason to worry, because we’re all fine. Not least the breakfast, which we booked as part of the package, contributed to our well-being. Selection and quality were good and appropriate for the price. The hotel is close to a main road in Gazi, the Leof. Andrea Papandreou. There was heavy car traffic there, and along the road one tourist shop, one bar, one restaurant followed the next, some with offerings of questionable quality. In the other direction, about 500m further along, is the beach, though, which does improve the location considerably. More on that in detail in the sections on the Heaven Beach Bar and Ammoudara Beach.

As the name suggests, this restaurant is part of the Petousis Hotel. It’s located directly on the main road, Leof. Andrea Papandreou, which runs along the sea in Gazi, and is therefore also accessible to guests from outside the hotel. As everywhere, the food was good and there were plenty of healthy options and traditional Greek cuisine. Admittedly, the pure meat dishes from the open fire weren’t all that recommendable in my opinion (which my son confirmed for the lamb chops, too, which were unusually fatty), but the salads and the smaller, less meat-heavy dishes were good. Otherwise the place is very large, and busy and loud in the evening. There’s a big play area, and if you don’t have small children you’ll want to sit as far away from it as possible. Since the place is right by the hotel, we went there quite often. In the end, the restaurant only came second to last in the ranking of the restaurants we visited. Still, as I said, the food there was good, unlike at the restaurant Tá Kalítera on Ammoudara Beach near Heraklion. In this restaurant and in the hotel, the cats you can see in the photo kept turning up as if they were part of the furniture. In the evenings, though, we also saw these cats among the other strays.

But that’s not all: Via the app you could also filter dishes by preferences and intolerances and watch videos of how local dishes with possibly unfamiliar names are made and prepared. On top of that, you could search for, find and book excursions and experiences, read various newspapers as well as the weather forecast for the next few days, and call the service staff over with specific requests such as clearing the table, paying or asking a question – and, of course, order the food and drinks. The long explanation was probably necessary because of the many features in the app, and by using it the restaurant can surely save itself one or two of the service staff who attentively walk through the courtyard and the interior rooms of the restaurant. In my opinion, one or two features fewer would have simplified the whole thing, but it was fascinating to see nonetheless.

With all that digitalization, it took a moment to refocus on the beautiful atmosphere and on the good, traditional food with modern accents. But once that had worked and the surprise had given way to getting used to the app, nothing stood in the way of a cozy evening here. The wine selection was good, as befits a location in a wine-growing region. For me, though, it stayed at one glass of wine, because the 0.5 per mille limit applies on Crete as well and the roads aren’t entirely harmless with their unusual layouts.

Very modern, delicious Japanese cuisine close to the beach.

When we’d had enough of Greek cuisine for one evening, we decided on the Hanzo Sushi restaurant. It’s easy to reach from the Petousis Hotel after a very short walk. Especially recommendable here is the main course with the salmon, which was served marinated in a sweet soy sauce. I only had a taste of this dish and had duck (crispy duck) myself. The duck was very good too, but the salmon was quite a bit better still. What was different that evening after the meal was that no tsikoudia or raki was served. It wasn’t necessary either, because the food sat much more lightly in the stomach than the Greek specialties.

Paralia Paleokastro Beach was only reachable by car for us and lies directly beneath the motorway bridge you exit from. In the afternoon the bridge provides shade on this otherwise reasonably wind-sheltered beach.

On top of that, thanks to the bay the water there is also much calmer and clearer than at the north-facing Ammoudara Beach, which makes it suitable for snorkeling as well. The beach is watched by a lifeguard who also keeps an irregular eye out to make sure nobody jumps into the water from the high cliffs, which did keep happening.

Beaches in the south tend to be hotter, with less wind and fewer waves.

As a contrast to the beach in the windy north, we wanted to visit a calm beach in the south for once. The destination was actually Litis beach. But it was really very hot, the parking lot was on a cliff quite a way from the beach and a longer descent under a scorching sun would have been waiting for us. So we went with the beach we had passed in the car on the way and turned back to go there. Presumably it was simply just too hot in general for this trip to the south on that day, even if the south is said to be warmer and less windy with a calmer sea. The sand on Kastri beach was so hot, in fact, that you could only get to the water wearing shoes, and staying there was more torture than relaxing on the beach. Now, I don’t want to do the beach an injustice and I believe it can be very lovely there at somewhat more moderate temperatures. At least the music in the nearby bar on the beach matched the heat, a (as I thought) top selection of hard rock and metal - like the hot sand, the hot-hairdryer breeze and the shimmering air, nothing for the faint of heart.

The tour we booked also included a sales-trip-style stop at an olive press and a short excursion to a nearly abandoned village. On a tour lasting more than 3 hours, these stops were necessary as well, to give man and machine a break from the heat and the rough terrain. At the beginning I found riding the quad more demanding than expected, because the group really does move relatively fast and part of the route went through rough terrain – and you can put a few official country roads in that category, too. In any case, the guide, originally from Morocco, was always keen to lift the mood and to spur the group on to ride faster. Without power steering and with all the hairpin bends, not exactly an undemanding tour. It led up a mountain with a good view – in that heat, a good way to cover a route like that with an engine in order to enjoy the view. The factory with the small shop where olives are processed had all kinds of traditional equipment for olive processing, which the guide described to us in more detail. Afterwards there was a tasting of various olive oils with bread and other specialties in the factory shop.

After a stop and a guided tour through a ghost village, the tour went downhill to the beach, to refuel (with the engine running) and back to the starting point. The whole thing activates the muscles in your shoulders and arms, and you look forward to the next relaxed day on the beach again, where you can unwind without having to focus all your strength on getting the sharp hairpin bend right. At the end, the whole quad group stopped at a snack bar to snack on a traditional Cretan bread pocket with meat, similar to a döner. A successful, action-packed change of pace, which we had booked in advance on getyourguide.