Heraklion! One of our (well, at least my) favorite places. I don’t know why exactly, but I’ve always liked this town and Crete. Today we are going to Myli or Mili Gorge to hike and then onto Rethymnon, where I’ve read that it has a beautiful old Town, a Venetian fortress and draws less tourists than Chania, another town up the coast. Ok. Plan.

We walk into town, passing that cool ancient technology museum we loved on our last visit, locate the rental agency easily and do the paperwork for the car. The car however is a couple of blocks away, around the corner and in a lot on another road. There is even a map posted on the door to show the way – which I dutifully take a picture of to make sure we know A) where to go now, and B) where to return the car!

The lot is actually in a pretty odd location, this narrow little entrance with a kiosk and small sign, and then a narrow little lot where there are a ton of cars double, triple and quadruple parked. Wow. Talk about parking at a premium! Nonetheless, we locate the car and once the lot attendant moves a car out of our way are off along the coastal road heading toward Mili Gorge.

The drive is fairly simply, on a good highway along the coast and up into the mountains. One left turn, and we are winding our way along the gorge, finding the trail head and parking rather easily. The gorge and its trails are about 4 km long, of which we plan just a short little hike from the Pano Mili to Kato Mili. We begin at the staircase that takes us down to the floor of the gorge itself, stopping to visit the Agios Antonios chapel, which is built right into the rock face of the cliff, almost like a cave!

Down we continue, through gorgeous flora and fauna, and tons of crumbling buildings. Because of the Mili stream, this area was once populated with close to 30 watermills, dating from the 16th Century. Mostly flour mills, these mills supplied the whole Rethymno region in their day but were all abandoned in the 1970s. Now it is just a wonderful place to hike and explore the old ruins – which we do, very happily!

The views are great. The paths narrow and full of surprises at every turn. Oh – and did I mention the Taverna? Yep – here on this dilapidated old dirt trail, across the gorge, there is of course a Taverna. We are no longer surprised at finding any cafe or Taverna in out of the way mountainous spots! So of course we must stop for a quick cappuccino – and bathroom. It is a lovely spot with shaded terraces overlooking the gorge – and the most amazing thing? The only way to get supplies in and out is by a zip line! Seriously. Talk about dedication to a business!

Continuing on, we wander through the little path, finding a gorgeous church with a view from the courtyard along the little winding path.

But soon the path starts a downward slope, and we decide we don’t want to have to hike back up, however far that might be, so we turn around and head back toward the car. Another reason to retreat is that the HoHo bus from Rethymnon stops here and it has been disgorging tons of people during our entire time here. These paths won’t handle that many people, so, yeah, it’s getting way too Peopley for us – thus – retreat.

Of course we still can’t help ourselves exploring on the way out – even flushing out a whole slew of bats from one of the dilapidated mills. Can you say run? Yes, we can!

Retracing our steps, we cross back over the gorge on the cement bridge and climb the stairs to the car. Even up here at the parking area along the side of the road the views are tremendous. Just green and gorgeous and natural.

We’ll be wishing for that serenity in about 20 minutes, which is the time it takes to drive into Rethymnon, through the crowded streets to find the parking lot by the Venetian harbor. Oh boy, this place is packed! We don’t know where they came up with “the town doesn’t get many tourists” because if this is what they consider “not many” – well, we’re questioning their sanity. Just goes to show – don’t believe everything you read on the Internet!

We’re here though, so we’re going to make the best of it. And the best of it turns out to be lunch at the first restaurant we spot on the harbor, Kritamoc. There are empty tables, it is outside under a shaded awning, and well, it’s lunch time – we’ll sit for a spell.

It turns out to be a good decision. Fresh seafood, straight from the seafood market right across the lane (at least that’s what the hawker guy tells us when he reels us in) and lots of choices. We shared a plate of Dakos – “Village” bread with tomatoes, feta and olive oil, which is not at all what we expected, with far more tomatoes on top, but altogether excellent. Next we had stuffed squid, which was delicious, along with fried cheese – very filling and all very good.

Done with our meal, we tempted fate by heading off into the town to try to visit some of the highlights. We manage to find the Rimondi Fountain, dating back to the 17th Century, and which once supplied drinking water for the entire city during the Venetian period. Nice, but, packed with people.

Neo-gothic version of Asheville in the summer on steroids. We’re outta here.

And we’re gone. Back out of the parking lot, through the crowded streets and onto the highway, making good time back to Heraklion. At the parking lot though, oh geez! It is even more jam packed than it was when we left. How they figure out how to move all these cars around, we’ll never know. But the lot attendant just tells us where to leave the car, we do, walk back to the rental office, explaining that the gas gauge wasn’t marked correctly when we left (long story, we have pictures to prove it though) and we don’t want to be charged extra, then walked back to the ship for the rest of the afternoon.

Funny footnote: Back on board we were talking to Tine, the loyalty/cruise next manager, and she knew all about Rethymnon! She said all her friends go there from Belgium and it is a huge tourist town. Sigh. If only we’d talked to her first….ah well!

The rest of the afternoon was lovely. We invited our pals Rosanna and Peter over to the cabin for snacks and drinks, and what a spread Angelo put on for us! It was lovely and we had a fabulous time hanging out on the balcony, sitting in the afternoon sun, drinking, eating and chatting as we sailed away from Heraklion.

After that dinner was just a light snack (salad, of course!) then onto the Cabaret for the show, where of course we were met by Simon, who tonight has the dancers sitting in our seats to reserve them until we arrive. Everyone is complicit!!! Tonight, though, we are officially handed our name plaques, because none of us will be at the show tomorrow night (violinist, we’re not interested; Simon has port and turnaround duties). So sweet and so perfect.

Next it was Stephen’s night to shine. He put on a fabulous solo show with an added surprise song on the piano – as I told him at the end, who knew he could play the piano!!!  We think he did it for his mom and dad because it was a special song too. So sweet!  

Of course we ended the night on our balcony looking at the strawberry moon!  So excited!  We’ve been reading about it all week – and didn’t know if we’d be able to see it, but we got it tonight. We took a ton of pictures, but, eh. Our cameras aren’t designed for that sort of nuance, and well, you can hardly tell a difference.

But we knew it was there, and it was a wonderful way to end an absolutely wonderful cruise (told you, not counting tomorrow in Piraeus – it is simply an organizational day for us).