For a Family Vacation on Crete, the Goal Was Simple: Chill Out
“OK,” I said, closing the elaborate menu. “Just tell us what’s good.”
We were sitting outside at a taverna in Fourni, Crete, on the eastern side of the island. It was a beautiful evening — mid 70s, fading sun, dry air, quiet village. A few cats skulked around the legs of our table and some locals were drinking beer a few tables over.
“Well, I’ll tell you,” the waitress responded. “My mother is a very good cook — look at me,” she said, gesturing at her zaftig frame. “We have lamb with lemon sauce and greens. Meatballs and rice and tomato sauce. Pork chops and rabbit.”
I was learning that Crete’s cuisine is not typical “Greek” food. It’s meatier, heavier, more of a mountain diet, a metaphor for how Crete is a subculture within Greece, as Sicily is to Italy, distinct from the mainland and the other islands.
This was our first night on the island, Greece’s biggest. Our boys, Apollo, 17, and Asa, 14, had just finished what to all of us felt like an especially long school year. So we made a deal: a week in Crete but light on the ruins and history, heavy on the beaches and the extraordinary food, and lots of “chill” (read: screen) time.
We ventured there in mid-June, before the worst of the heat waves hit Europe, draining energy supplies (and people) and sparking wildfires, including a few on Crete. But our trip didn’t go entirely smoothly either. Few do. Fifteen minutes before a taxi to the airport pulled up to our home in London, Courtenay, my wife, looked at an email from our hotel, started tapping and swiping furiously on her phone and then fixed her eyes on me.
“Did you know that Malia Beach is considered the party capital of Crete?” she asked.
(Malia Beach was where I had booked us, last minute.)
“Party capital?” I grunted, fighting a zipper on my bag. “What does that really mean, anyway?”
“It means it’s the center of the lads’ holidays,” she said. “It means you didn’t do enough research.”
“Nice work, Daddy,” Apollo said.
Babies, Beaches and an Unusual Island
When we got to the hotel, Phaea Cretan Malia, we discovered it wasn’t some swinging singles scene. The opposite. It was packed with families — young families. There were babies everywhere: crawling in the grass, splashing in the pool, gumming bananas at the breakfast buffet, trolling the beach for their mothers and getting cleaned up on the chaise longues.
So we spent the next week escaping our resort to explore Crete, only to retreat to it at the end of the hot, busy days.
One of our first missions was Kolokithia Beach, which the woman at the Avis stand at Heraklion Airport described as “a hidden gem.” Like the other beaches we targeted, it was on the Aegean Sea. As we drove up and down the mountains, passing olive groves, vineyards and cove after cove of ultramarine water, Apollo said: “I didn’t realize Crete was so big.”
“Super big,” Courtenay responded. “And look at the water. That color is astounding.”
From a distance we could see that Kolokithia was a gem — clean white sand and glassy water like a lagoon. But hidden it was not. There was barely a square inch of beach to put down a hat. We plunged in and surfaced to see two mini cruise ships steaming toward shore. Hundreds of people soon marched off like a line of sugar ants.
“Dad,” Asa said. “Think we should get out of here?”
On the way to the next beach, Voulisma, equally crowded but equally stunning, we stopped to catch a boat to Spinalonga, a rocky island with an unusual back story. Right before we pushed off, a man with an accordion leaped onto the deck.
“Helloooo!”
He pumped the bellows and started cranking out “La Bamba” and “You Are My Sunshine.” As other tourists bobbed their heads, Courtenay whispered to me: “It’d be better without the music.”
“Come on,” I said.
“No, I’m serious,” she replied. “People were banished to this island. And now we have this goofy music.”
We made a quick round of Spinalonga and, in spite of ourselves, got into the history. In the early 20th century, Greeks with leprosy were housed there, and you can still see the stone gate and disinfection chamber they had to pass through. Hundreds of years before that, the Venetians built a fortress overlooking the sea.
Crete, we discovered, was the jewel in Venice’s maritime crown from the 1200s to the 1600s, prized for its olive oil, granaries and strategic location in the eastern Mediterranean.
The Ottomans liked the location, too. So did Hitler. On Crete’s northwestern coast lies an Allied war cemetery, a monument to the men who died trying to repel a Nazi invasion. As we walked quietly among the graves, all immaculately kept, Asa pointed to two tombstones placed right next to each other, facing the sea.
“They fought together,” Asa said. “And died together.”
Fridge-Magnet Central
We spent the next few days at our hotel, which we grew to appreciate, even with the baby army patrolling the beach. The rooms were comfortable, the landscaping was lush, the staff members were extra helpful and the food at the restaurants was delicious.
Not far away stood all the nightclubs, including one named Apollo, which I braved with Apollo. Sunburned 20-somethings dominated the dance floor and others along the strip, but the scene was relatively wholesome. I didn’t see any fights or almost-fights. Or anyone pushing drugs. I didn’t even see any police.
“It’s a pretty clean party scene,” Adonis, a bartender, told me. “The community wouldn’t put up with anything else.”
Another day we drove three hours to Chania, a romantic port city. It didn’t feel great to blast past turnoffs for some of antiquity’s greatest sights — like the Palace of Knossos. But that was the deal we had made with the kids, so we kept chugging, and I told myself, “Well, at least we’re going to Chania.” I had read a lot about Chania.
We quickly figured out that Chania was fridge-magnet central. Horse-drawn carts with sweating tourists clogged the roads. Endless shops sold towels, T-shirts and, oddly, granola. The grand harbor might have been a nice place for a stroll if it hadn’t been broiling outside and insanely bright.
So we ducked into a restaurant that looked like all the rest, but the meal felt special: fresh mussels, calamari that came in wide, chewy pieces and two kinds of taramosalata, whipped and traditional.
Clearly, the highlight of our trip was the food. So for our last night we drove a half-hour into the rising hills. Our destination: Krassopsychia, a village tavern whose name means “the soul of wine.”
Asa and I went to the bathroom and discovered an incredibly well-stocked shop downstairs. The shelves glistened with bottles of olive oil, honey, wines and liqueurs — all locally made at criminally low prices. Our most interesting purchase? Two slim bottles of cinnamon-honey raki that looked promising. (After bringing them home and forcing a tiny glass on some friends, I wish I had bought two gallons. Even my friends who don’t drink much said: “That’s good. Really good.”)
For dinner, we let our server guide us and — poof! — the following appeared: vine leaves, stuffed peppers, deep fried mushrooms the size of baseballs and a platter of superbly grilled meat.
I asked Babis, the waiter, what goes on in the village. “Somebody makes wine, somebody makes olive oil,” he said. “There’s about a hundred people left. But they like it. They stick around.”
We were too stuffed to order dessert, but one arrived anyway: an enormous bowl of fried dough balls, vanilla ice cream, chocolate sprinkles, caramel sauce and slices of banana.
“Loukoumades!” Babis said.
Loukoumades are apparently meant to be shared. So we hunched over the middle of the table and attacked them like a wake of vultures.
“That was the best dessert I’ve had in my entire life!” Apollo exclaimed. “The little balls, the ice cream, the sauce, the bananas — four tastes in one,” his voice trailed off in a sugary haze. “Incredible.”
When we got into the car, everyone was full. And quiet. Perhaps a little sad, too. After all the negotiations and squabbles, our summer vacation was nearly over.
The road ahead curved like a ribbon. The light was going fast. The setting sun created a crisp, glowing, orange outline around the craggy mountains in front of us, the same ones that gave Crete its olives, its superb climate, its protection and its life force.
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