Crete
Saturday 25th May to Sunday 2nd June 2024
Star Beach Village & Waterpark, Heraklion
Tuesday
Ah, this is more like it. Tuesday morning greeted us with lovely sunny skies, and because of this my daily run was chalked off before breakfast. I flipped back to heading westward and got this shot of the harbour looking back.
This is basically the same shot as from my first run but with much, much nicer weather. I can see a cloud here but it's tiny.
This is from heading back along the coast. Looks set to be a scorcher (albeit a manageable scorcher - the temperature tendered to hover around the low to mid-20s, which is perfect in my book).
After breakfast at the, yes you guessed it, Taverna, we went on a little cultural excursion. This seemed to be part of the hotel complex: a little gathering of three chairs on the protruding rock. They might almost have had our names on them but we were on a mission.
Gregory gazed out at the shimmering sea.
My plan was to go here: an open-air museum. I had clocked it on the previous day's run and it was barely 10 minutes' walk away so there was no excuse for missing out.
Daisy maybe wasn't quite so keen on the prospect...
...but what was not to like with things like a carpentry bit.
The main building looked pretty good against the bright blue sky.
This was a sort of open-air theatre bit. Not too popular today, though, but it would be a good place for a wedding, for example.
Up at the top of the building, we were afforded some lovely views.
Hello! Who's this little cheeky chappie?
Inside, there were some ornately decked out rooms.
These look like two gourds lying in a sink, waiting forlornly to be washed up.
In the hot sun, only crazy-looking plants can survive, it seems.
Daisy was keen to repent all her sins. Or maybe just have a nosey.
The sailor of this boat got a bit lost. Land ahoy!
This, er, bike-amaran was constructed with a left over bike. It's not clear whether it could be fully hooked up so that the pedals drove you along in the water - it looked more like it was just on display.
In a little learning room, the kids were suddenly enlivened by a hoopla game.
Like on any school holiday trip, we were playing dodge the large crowd of small children, the plethora of small satchels the evidence of their presence, and also their absence.
This is a rainbow of junk, created by finding various objects from around the site. It's not clear how much they just spray-painted the objects to make them fit. ("I've found a tin can." - "That's brown." - "Hang on a sec.... [tsssss]... it's green now.")
Your quest to find twigs that look like gymnasts could quite feasibly never end, but here is a decent-sized selection to start you off.
In this presentation room, it seemed that the kids had finally got too bored to even walk around. Or perhaps they were tired in the warmth. We spent around an hour there with, it has to be said, varying levels of enthusiasm displayed. But inside I bet they both felt culturally enriched.
However, enough was enough and it was time to head back. Here is another activity we would not be doing, exciting though it might look. We naturally gravitated back to the Taverna, and our rooms to prepare ourselves for the afternoon session.
Slides were of course the order of the day in the afternoon. Here are two of the slides. The left hand slide weaved and involved you sitting in tubes. We were allowed to link up on this one, which led to us barrelling down pretty quickly, although for a while the most fun was had when I went last and hunted them down with my superior speed (yes, it was gravity). On the right was a double tube slide which we nicknamed The Condiments (mustard and ketchup). Again, due to, ahem, gravity, I could travel faster, in this case often starting behind and finishing ahead.
Not too far away lay the other two slides. The one on the left was the only tubeless slide, and was basically a near-vertical drop sending you hitting the surface water at high speed to sometimes painful effect. The black side on the right was similar-ish to the first white slide, just that it was encased and largely completely dark, which made the twists and turns a bit more jolting, unexpected as they were (at least for the first few goes). We weren't allowed to link up on this one. One aspect that I didn't notice until a day or two in was the maximum weight limit on some of these rides. It was quite possible that, post-buffet lunch, I was getting quite close to this limit, but obviously my, erm, muscular frame convinced them that it would not be an issue. The lifeguards were generally pretty relaxed about things.
After another couple of hours of trudging uphill and whizzing down, it was time to head back to the room. Coastline still looking lovely.
After tea at the main restaurant (again I hadn't booked), the kids were keen to go back to play pool at the lobby bar. (There was an irritating system of paying for tokens, the machine for which promised offers and discounts but never delivered them.)
The entertainment tonight was a magician, who we didn't watch for too long before retiring, although he did do a funny skit where he showed how he did the trick in slow motion, which I think featured someone pretending to have nipped in and rearranged things mid-act as part of the "impossible" trick that he did.
Standard morning protocols were in place with a morning run then breakfast at the Taverna. This time, I got the omelette chef to make me an, um, omelette. I only thought of taking a picture of it halfway through - they weren't that stingy.
Usual place for breakfast after another morning run then headed down to the beach for some fish spotting in the clear water and ball action. Firstly, though, were these odd looking things in the water, almost like beached seals.
Yup, still some lovely views overlooking the beach.
A cheap orange ball from one of the local shop provided considerable entertainment in the sea. The water was lovely and clear too, which enabled us to spot some fish. There was an amusing moment when Gregory surfaced and spluttered "I saw five!", which became one of the catchphrases of the holiday.
After our exercise in the water, it was time for some sunchair rest, with Gregory covering up much more than Daisy.
But you can have too much sunshine, so we headed for some shade, and some food (Daisy would dispute strongly that you can have too much ice-cream, particularly when it's covered by the all-inclusive).
Gregory was less enthusiastic about the ice-cream, or perhaps the prospect of having his photo taken.
We had lunch back at - yes, you guessed it - the Taverna. Every day, there was an amazing array of well-constructed desserts such as this one.
After lunch, we wandered into town, doing little bits of shopping (stocking up on more sun cream and drinks). The view from the coastal route was pretty nice.
This is the view looking towards the centre of the island.
The plan was to get on the street train for a 90-minute circuit of our area. The train came right past our hotel but we walked to town to find the ticket office, although we possibly didn't need to. It was good to have the walk anyway, although the kids may disagree. A fair bit behind schedule, the train finally arrived and off we went.
Daisy looked out onto the sea side for part of the journey.
Gregory's view was inland...
...but no less aesthetically pleasing.
After looping round, we got back to the coastline as the sky continued to be resolutely blue (with only some wispy cloud in the distance).
As we had switched around, Gregory had his sea view.
And here is our vehicle in, well not quite all its glory, but you get the gist.
I had been worried about Gregory's travel sickness during the journey, but I actually started to feel increasingly queasy as the afternoon went on. I thought it was a bit of travel sickness but it persisted into the evening. We got back to our hotel with about 30 or 40 minutes of slide action still manageable, and of course that is what we did, but I was feeling a bit of rough so it was a bit of a brave effort.
I deteriorated afterwards, clambering into bed with the shivers while the kids entertained themselves. I just about roused myself to head down to the Taverna, which we had booked, but I was in no state to make the most of the buffet, as I picked at a handful of chips unenthusiastically, sipped a bit of coke on the off-chance that it helped things. Daisy spotted my discomfort and suggested that I head back upstairs, reassuring me that they could cope fine by themselves, so I took her up on that opportunity. I spent the rest of the evening in bed and gradually, through the night, my temperature stabilised (although I got too hot at one point too). It felt like a stomach bug but I was never actually sick. Not a great way to spend the Wednesday on holiday regardless.
Time for the third page or return to the Secret Portal.