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La signalisation routière en Crète n’est pas toujours à la hauteur et nous avons eu de la difficulté à trouver l’entrée du site archéologique de Gortyne, une ancienne ville romaine. Une fois sur le site, nous avons réalisé que le site n’est pas vraiment mis en valeur et qu’il est difficile de s’y retrouver. Nous sommes repartis déçu de Gortyne.
Ensuite, nous avons fait un arrêt au village suivant, Agii Deka, pour voir une église du 12ème siècle et nous avons découvert quelques jolies rues photogéniques avant de continuer jusqu’à Ano Viannos où nous avons dîner dans un petit resto familial où nous étions les seuls clients. Ensuite, nous avons fait un arrêt à Mirtos, une petite station balnéaire très calme en hiver, et à Ierapetra où les vagues venaient se briser sur le mur derrière la plage. Le temps était devenu très nuageux et le vent s’était levé. De là nous avons pris la route qui passait dans les montagnes pour nous rendre à Agios Nikolaos.
The road signs in Crete aren’t always up to par and we had difficulty finding the entrance to the archaeological site of Gortyna, an ancient Roman city. Once on the site, we realized that the site isn’t really well sign-posted and that it is difficult to navigate. We left Gortyna very disappointed.
Then we made a stop at the next village, Agii Deka, to see a 12th century church and we discovered some pretty photogenic streets before continuing to Ano Viannos where we had lunch in a small family restaurant where we were the only customers. Then, we made a stop at Mirtos, a small seaside resort very quiet in winter, and at Ierapetra where the waves broke on the wall behind the beach. The weather had become very cloudy and the wind had picked up. From there we took the road that went through the mountains to get to Agios Nikolaos.
Gortyna
Agii Dekka
Ano Viannos
Mirtos
Sari Kampos Beach 
Ierapetra
[Auteur/Author: Suzanne & Pierre]
Les voyages de Suzanne & Pierre 
Such beautiful photos 🙂 have a great week, PedroL
Thanks PedroL. Glad you enjoyed this series. Crete is such a beautiful island…
it is 🙂 maybe someday I’ll return eheh PedroL
Toute la Grèce est dans ces bleus, dans ces villages blottis sur des collines et c’est beau. J’ai plaisir avec ce pays car il fait partie de ceux qui manquent à ma longue liste de voyages. Votre bannière avec cette chaine de montagnes est superbe.
Merci Marie. La Crète est effectiment une île magnifique. Le bleu y est moins présent que dans les îles plus au nord mais quand même là. Bien contente que cette petite visite virtuelle ait su vous plaire.
The Mediterranean blue is back in those quint setting from Agii Dekka. I like all of those. I also love the picture of the drift wood on the Sari Kampos Beach. Good set even though you were disappointed at first with your day, it turned out well.
Thanks Jacqui. Yes, we got over our disappointment about Gortyna quite quickly. Though we had a few other adventures during the day. We took the right turn and did many kilometres in the wrong direction and had to backtrack to get back to the right road; then we had trouble finding an opened restaurant to have lunch and then couldn’t find an opened grocery store on Sunday to buy food but we did find a few opened restaurants to have dinner…quite an eventful day.
Every cloud has a silver (or in this case a blue) lining.
Lovely series of photos, Suzanne! 🙂
Thanks Donna. Glad you enjoyed this series. Crete is truly a beautiful island.
Lots of lovely blues here. The door with the painted flowers is very sweet.
Thanks Anabel. Agii Dekka was indeed very pretty with its blue doors and windows. It was a nice stop.
The colours are so pretty – the washed blue of the doors with the flowers are especially lovely 🙂
Thanks Rosemary. Agii Dekka was a very pretty village a bit off the beaten track. We were glad to have taken the time to stop.
These little out of the way places can be real gems – so fortunate you could at least do this part of your trip even though I know it had to the cut short with the pandemic crisis.
You are totally right and it sometimes takes just a bit of luck to find them. We indeed had to cut short this trip. We still have to show our pictures from our last stage: Santorini. We have been slow at processing them as the weather is truly hot right now (above 30C most days) and sitting in front of the computer isn’t always comfortable (we don’t have AC in our apartment!). However, we are almost done so you should see a few additional posts on our blog soon to wrap-up the stories from this trip.
It sounds very hot to be sitting in front of a computer in that heat! It’s nice to see travel photos to remind us of past trips – virtual travel is the way to go at present for the most part! Will look forward to seeing your photos of Santorini 😃
Crete! ❤ I spent a month there with my own car, Peugeot 504, and another friend was with his (newer) Peugeot. It was August. The best month of my life. We only slept on beaches. That was a loooong time ago. 🙂 Wonderful to travel there again with you. (I wonder if you went to Vai in the east, and to Preveli Beach, and hiked the Samaria Gorge…)
Thanks and glad this post brought back nice memories. We didn’t to Vai, Preveli or Samaria Gorge as we were too off season. We were there in early March so the Gorge weren’t opened and most of the ferries weren’t operating. It was great because we were often the only tourists but it also means that lots of sites aren’t opened.