Greece TR, July 26-August 5, 2018
Since this is my first TR I’m sorry if I miss some basic details and upload garbage photos. I’m more of an information stalker than poster on DDF, but I’ve gotten tons of useful information from here and I almost never post so I figure it’s time I gave back a little and hopefully this can be of some help to people planning their own trip. I also was not planning to write a TR at the time so I don’t have pics of many things and the ones I did take were on my old iPhone. I don’t own a dslr and don’t really know how to use one (sorry
@Something Fishy ) but maybe one day I’ll upgrade and learn.
TRIP PLANNING:
Since I was originating in Israel, Europe was the most practical destination. But I was looking for a place not overrun by bein hazmanim tourists which ruled out most of Italy, Vienna, Prague and many more cities, including the more popular Greek islands like Santorini and Mykonos. Then I read about Crete, which is an enormous island that is a close to six hour drive end to end, and less than two hour flight from Israel. Figured I can find a quiet corner there. I wanted to get Athens in on the same trip, and after playing around with different flight combinations I came to TLV-HER, HER-ATH, ATH-TLV.
1) Flights
TLV-HER was on Aegean and cost $216 per person. There were no good direct award options so I used 14k UR for it from CSR. HER-ATH was on Ellinair (which I never heard of before) and was $62 (4k UR). ATH-TLV was back on Aegean for $210 per person (14k UR). There were cheaper options for HER-ATH but they were all on ATR-72’s or other turboprops which my wife wasn’t so excited about (not sure what it is about those planes that scare them
), so I paid a bit more to get a 737.
2) Hotels
I wanted to see both sides of Crete so I booked 3 nights at Domes Noruz Chania which at the time was 45k/night Marriott points, and 3 nights at Domes of Elounda which also cost 45k/night. Domes Noruz is on the west side of the island while Domes of Elounda is on the eastern side and it is a three hour drive from one to the other. Domes Noruz is an adults only resort and will not allow children under 16. Domes of Elounda, on the other hand, is extremely family friendly.
Since we were going to be in Athens for Shabbos, I was looking for a hotel that was near the Chabad House/Restaurant and that is able to give mechanical keys. I found Athens Lodge, which was literally a 1 minute walk from Chabad, and confirmed with them that all rooms had mechanical key capability. We were staying in Athens from Wednesday to Sunday so I figured I’ll just stay at this hotel for the entire time. It was $218/night for the “Superior Room Partial Acropolis View” (which is one tier above the base room), so I redeemed about 58k UR for the whole stay. But then I discovered that the rooms were extremely small and I wasn’t too excited about staying there for four days so I emailed the hotel about upgrading to a bigger room and ended up paying around 120 extra euros per night to get the largest suite they had which was ”The Athens Lodge Suite with Acropolis View & Veranda”. There are points hotels not that far of a walk from there and I met some people who stayed there for Shabbos and it was fine, so if I would be doing it again I probably would do that as it would have ended up much cheaper.
3) Car Rental
Since I would be driving from one end of Crete to the other, and most attractions and activities are more than just a taxi ride away, I was going to rent a car for the entire stay.
If you search for rental cars in Crete you'll see a ton of results. Some of them had such dumb names that they seem like scams but the big companies were much more expensive so I looked into these little guys. I found one that had great reviews and that everybody liked the owner and I booked a six day rental for a little more than 300 euros. The company name is the very originally named “AutoRentals Crete”
. Most of their cars have manual transmissions, and although I really want to learn how to drive a manual, Crete was probably not the best place to learn, so I booked the second smallest automatic that they had and stayed upset at myself the entire week for not driving a manual since they were so much cheaper.
From my research it seemed that I don't need a car in Athens unless I'm driving out of the city and it turned out to be true. A car would've been a huge pain to deal with to drive and park in the narrow streets and is totally unnecessary there.
4) Kosher Food
The kosher restaurant in Athens, which is run by the shliach there, delivers packaged meals to anywhere in Greece with a refrigerated shipping company. They have 6 dinner menus and a breakfast and Shabbos meals and you can also add items from the grocery attached to the restaurant. I ordered 5 dinners, 4 breakfasts, Shabbos meals, and some groceries like grape juice, wine, and milk. The order process was quite easy to do online and all the info you can need is on the website. There are clear instructions in English and Greek how to warm it up, not to open the actual meals, etc.. They also needed a contact at the hotel that has been notified about the kosher meals, so I reached out to the hotel and got one.
I also brought along plenty of food for lunches and for after the suppers run out.
Part 1- Day 1-4, Chania, Crete
Day 1- Thursday, July 26
The flight from Tel Aviv to Heraklion was mostly uneventful, besides for learning in some very raucous ways that Greece is a very popular Israeli vacation spot (if you think frum flyers are not so cooperative try flying with a group of secular Israelis heading to vacation). The approach into HER was beautiful. We were able to see how clear and blue the water was even from the plane, as you can see from this very unprofessional iphone pic.
We deboarded at a remote stand, waited in a long immigration line (the soldiers were all smoking outside till they saw our bus coming), and then waited for a half hour for our suitcase at an ancient baggage carousel. The car rental guy had emailed us that there would be someone waiting for us to take us to our car, and sure enough near the exit to the airport there were tons of guys standing holding signs with names. They seemed to all be from different rental companies and it took another five minutes to walk through them and find the guy holding the sign with our name printed in very small letters on it. The big companies have desks closer to the terminal, but the small ones are all in a lot a couple of minute walk from the terminal. The lot was divided up into little squares, with every company having a little hut for an office and a couple of cars in front of it.
The rental guy told me that they would have to switch the car they give me for a different one on Friday (the next day) because of a reason I didn't quite get and that they will come to wherever I am to switch it. I told him I will be a two hour drive away but he wasn't fazed. Then I tried explaining that I wouldn't be able to do the switch after sundown on Friday but he didn't seem to understand and thought I was talking about some party I was going to be at, but he said he'll come earlier.
We left the airport at around 4:30 PM for the two hour drive to Chania. I had gotten an email from the restaurant in Athens while I was in the air that they had reached out to my hotel and confirmed that my food had arrived which gave me one less thing to worry about. Side note, there are many stray dogs near the airport but they don't really approach people.
Driving in Crete is an interesting experience to say the least. Most of the way it was a one lane highway but Cretans treat it as two lanes in each direction. There's the actual lane for people who are driving fast enough and wild enough to put the Italians to shame (and Brooklynites, Israelis etc...), and then there's the shoulder for everybody else. I'm not kidding, it seems like it's really expected of you to drive on the shoulder if someone behind you is going even a bit faster than you, even in what in every civilized country are no-passing zones. Having learned how to drive in NYC I caught on pretty quickly but I did see some clueless tourists merrily driving down the middle of their lane with a long line of angry Cretans behind them. Cretans seem to be known as bad drivers as I kept on hearing throughout my vacation from regular Greeks.
Chania has an old part of the city that's what everyone comes to visit but the hotel is in a newer part that's about a fifteen minute drive from there. After turning off the main road I drove down this very narrow and slummy looking street until I saw the gate to the resort on the left. The difference between the surrounding neighborhood and the hotel is so stark that is really like an oasis in the desert type of thing.
The resort itself is beautiful and tastefully designed. We were welcomed into a gorgeous lounge/check-in area, were seated, and offered the signature drink (we declined).
She confirmed that my kosher food arrived even without me asking about it and told me who to talk to if I had specific instructions. She then walked us to our room and explained what we were passing on the way. There are two nice pools on site, one regular and one quiet. The quietness of the latter didn't seem like it was enforced too strictly but it was definitely empty more often.
The room itself was nicely designed and had an outdoor section with some seating, a bathtub and a plunge pool.
The base rooms all have plunge pools but they are all right next to the walking paths. They aren't really private as all that divides the pool and the path is a wall of slanted slats so if your standing on the path at one angle you can't see in at all but from another angle you see right in as you can see from these pictures (the ones at the ends of some of the paths were more private since less people used those paths).
The shower in the bathroom was a bit weird. It had no separation or curtain dividing it from the rest of the bathroom so water kind of went everywhere but since it was stone dried up pretty quickly.
There is a narrow beach with seating that only hotel guests were able to use, but there were tons of non hotel guests just walking up and down the beach past the hotel. It does get pretty quiet at mealtimes.
By the time we got settled in it was after seven so we headed to the beach to watch the picture perfect sunset. I wish I knew how to take proper pictures but this is all I have from that sunset.
I went to talk to the kitchen manager Gabriel about my food and he turned out to be quite familiar with all the kosher requirements and was phenomenally accommodating. The restaurant had sent a list of what's in the box and what should be sent with what so there was no need for him to shlep the boxes out to show me. The food came in two foam boxes like this.
I told him which supper to warm up and it was sent to my room in a timely manner.
Day 2- Friday, July 27
All we had planned for Friday was a Segway tour of Chania since it had to be booked in advance. They had a couple of options but we picked the "Old City & Harbor Combo Tour". We left the hotel with ample time to get to the old city but finding parking close to where the segway shop was located was a nightmare. After pulling some NYC parking moves we ran to the shop and arrived 10 minutes late but the others were waiting patiently for us and commiserated about the parking situation.
The tour was incredibly informative and we got to see pretty much every interesting site in Chania without taking a step. Our guide was very knowledgeable and we got a ton of information about the city, Cretan culture, and all other things Greek. (If anyone is planning on doing this tour make sure to bring cash, as they didn’t let me pay the balance with a credit card.)
When we passed places that I wanted to come back and check out, I marked them in Google maps to remember where they are. The streets in the old city are narrow and convoluted and I would never have found certain places otherwise.
After the tour we stopped in a large supermarket on the way back to the resort and bought some fruit and drinks for Shabbos.
We spent some time on the surprisingly empty beach and I spoke to the kitchen manager Gabriel to confirm when to send the heated meals on Friday night and Shabbos day. The are lots of halachic nuances with this so I'd recommend asking your LOR for the details before doing it.
Day 3- Shabbos, July 28The resort was pretty calm and quiet over Shabbos. Our meals were delivered right on time but the guy that delivered it Shabbos morning insisted on a signature and didn't speak any English. It's not as easy as you might think to mime that you can't write today because of religious reasons and that you'll take care of it at nightfall, but eventually he understood that I'm somehow different (maybe my yarmulka had something to do with that
) and that it'll get worked out somehow.
Day 4- Sunday, July 29We had to get to the other side of the island and we wanted to get back to old Chania so we checked out at twelve, got what was left over of our food from the kitchen, packed up the car, and headed to Chania. There was plenty of parking because many stores are closed on Sundays. I was nervous the entire time in Chania about our stuff in the car that was clearly visible from the outside since we had a hatchback, so I'd recommend getting a closed trunk if you'll be leaving your luggage in the car.
In Chania we explored the streets, checked out some shops, took some pictures at the old harbor, bought some cool locally carved olive wood souvenirs, and then headed out to share the highway with some crazy Cretan drivers for the trip to Elounda.
Part 2 coming soon…..Day 4-7, Elounda