Hot and cold

Now that I feel a bit the summer... I start thinking of next winter holiday.
Yes, it has been decided that each year we will make a family sea holiday and a winter-time holiday only me and my half.
This morning I had a quick look around, a chat with a colleague about her dream to go to Antartica made me think of going north north north. My husband reminded me of the idea of going to Iceland though. Since it will last only 1 week or 10 days, travelling time is important to be sure we enjoy enough. And to my surprise, Iceland is closer than Svalbard.... so it is very likely going to be Iceland! Will be short but will leave space for a second visit :)
Then, I started to feel guilty that I am letting the planning of the Crete holiday lag behind. So I had a quick look on Tripadvisor for best places to visit, here is a short list
- Falasarna beach: there are for rent chairs and umbrellas, and there are bars.... so we can go there without much load from the house
- Gramvousa and Balos lagoon , better (for us) if reached from a boat that you can take in Kissamos. In fact the car trip requires to go on a white road for quite a stretch, plus walk once parked to get to the beach.

More searches will follow soon :)

Samariá Gorge

Here is a first place I have been checking out for an excursion while in Crete.
Instead of the first excursion, it is going to be the first exclusion.

I found lot of useful info on Wikipedia for planning the day there, but also small notes like "The walk takes 4–7 hours and can be strenuous". Then I also read a bit here and there.

I should obviously stop looking at pictures and videos now.... or I need to convince half of myself that he can bring two kids for a total of approx 25 kilos on his shoulders.

Paleochora!!!

Finally booked, flight to Chania and house in Paleochora....

Now more concrete dreams about the trip are starting!!!


The person that suggested me the apartment, sent me also the link of her story published in  Turisti Per Caso.

Coming days I am going to find all possible information on our destination, and will try to collate it here, as to have a kind of handbook during the holidays...

PS: while looking back for the link of the diary published in Turisti Per Caso, I started reading another review, this one made by someone going in the same period as us... well I so want to be there!!!

Sunny holidays in september

My last days I have been very busy deciding where to go on holidays.
Every time I think I am close to the perfect place, some new requirement pops up in my head blowing it up.

So let's try to be more rational.
We are a family of two adults with 2 boys (3 and 1 year old).
Length is between 11 and 13 days (depending on flight and hotels availability)
We already made many experiences travelling, with only one kid and also with both, and we found out the following
- space: if we spend more than 3 days in a single room, we ALL get crazy. We prefer a mini apartment, kitchen is not necessary because we are lazy, but two rooms (bedroom+living) allow some running around.
- distance from airport: of course we do not want to spend hours travelling between airport and location, and at the same time we do not want the planes landing on our head.... well this does not look easy already
- beach: for me we should get a place on the beach, in particular sandy beach. Stones are hard, get too hot, and kids cannot build castles with them.
- swimming pool: my husband prefers a swimming pool. In that case I must add the requirement of a children swimming pool. Why on a sandy beach would you go to a swimming pool... here is where is getting more complex
- weather: of course September is not perfect in all locations, and we want zero risk of rain because this is the only sun we see the all year
- relatively safe/easy: with young kids, we still prefer not to get out of Europe.

After the above, we restricted to the following possible destinations:
Canarie islands, Rhodes, Crete

At the Canaries I have a friend with a house, but it is booked for the period we need :(
In September the Mediterranean sea is still quite warm, it would be a shame going at the Canaries where anyway you cannot bath (as literal translation of "fare il bagno" which is not necessarily swim, is more chill in the water) because it is too cold. Maybe Canaries are nice for the winter season.

To go to Rhodes and Crete from Amsterdam there is practically only a flight company, Transavia.
Then if we really really want to satisfy the swimming pool requirement, best is to go to a village. Besides checking D-reizen and Thomas Cook, I always end up looking directly in Neckermann and finding there better descriptions and deals. The village could be nice except the perfect village does not exist.  Either too expensive, or is in the middle of nowhere, or reviews are too bad (for that I use a lot Google and Tripadvisor), or location, or or or... shall I maybe stop looking for the perfect place?

For now let's focus only on Crete, or I really get crazy

I had a suggestion for a house in Crete in Paleochora (or however you want to spell it), Anthea Apartments.


While it is close to two beaches, a sandy one and a stones one, and apparently inside a beautiful town, it does not have the swimming pool. And is at more than one hour from Chania airport.

So I went back to look at the villages, and while I have been suggested not to go to the North East of Crete, I found that the only side with sandy beaches is starting at Maleme then going direction of Chania. Chania itself looks really worth even more than a visit, however by checking with Google satellite maps I could see that the beaches are very tiny, with not much services (either two umbrellas and chairs from the closeby hotel or deserted), and the sand is actually mixed with pebbles (and then when you enter the water is only pebbles).... aargh, back to the beginning... shall I try Rhodes?

For now I am trying to convince myself (mostly my other half) that Paleochora is not so far from the airport and that the swimming pool is not strictly necessary.... Let's see where we end up in the coming days!!!