Electra Pension, Maleme, Crete

Back onto slightly more pleasant matters, we once again spent a week or so on the island of Crete during our summer holidays. It's the first time that we've gone and done exactly the same thing two years in a row. We usually like seeing new things when possible, but this place has really struck a chord with us. Norwegian Air has a cheap direct flight to Chania airport, which is about 3 1/2 hours flying time from Arlanda. 3 1/2 hours ? It used to take me longer than that simply to get from my home town in NZ to Australia ! God but I love being in Europe.

The place where we stay is in the village of Maleme, about 15 or so kilometres west of the city of Chania along the coast. Look it up on a map, you won't be sorry. Between Chania and Maleme lie the main tourist resort villages. These look exactly like what you would expect. Full of shops selling bikinis, mini-golf courses, and restaurants offering "Full English" breakfasts. I've never been to Benidorm but I imagine that's pretty much what it would look like.

Maleme is different. It's a place where normal people live year round. It's their home and to stay there is to become part of their community for a while. That's quite a privilage. It's not totally without tourists, we stayed there after all. But it's not nearly as much "in your face". Probably the main reason for that is that there is nothing to do in Maleme. No miniature golf course, no go-kart track, and no nightclubs. It's as boring as buggery. Just what we were looking for. Our daily choices consisted of deciding what time we would lie by the pool, what time we would lie on the beach, what time we would take a stroll through the olive groves, and what was the daily special at the local restaurant. Quite a lot to ponder over. If you're a party animal, don't go to Maleme. Ever. Go to Phuket, Bali, or Ibiza and throw up in the streets like everyone else. But, if you're like us, and are in dire need of recharging your batteries, then Maleme is the place for you. Because it's a little special, it only attracts people who like what we like. So when we did meet the odd fellow tourist, we generally found that we had quite a bit in common. Which was nice. It's not a holiday town for young families, most of the people we met were couples around our age.

Maleme does rely quite a bit on tourists, as does most of Crete. But it's a bit more discrete. There is one large "all-inclusive" hotel located at the far end of town. It appeared to cater primarily for Russians. This hotel didn't really have an impact on the appeal of the small town as we found that most of their guests rarely left the hotel complex. Maybe that's typical for All Inclusive hotels. Anyway, we barely saw half a dozen a day from that hotel. Beside that hotel is another hotel which caters for Finns. Like the Russians, they tended to stick pretty close to their hotel and we met very few out in the street. The English package tour market is catered for with a hotel/apartment complex located next to the Finnish hotel. I think it's booked through Tui. Most of the couples we met in town, or in restaurants, were English couples. So the 3 main tourist hotels are all placed together, away from the main part of the village. When I say "away", it's still only a 5 or 10 minute walk to the centre of the village, but they do feel removed from the village itself.

The hotel where we stayed is called Electra Pension. I do recommend that you check it out. They have a website, but it's pretty low tech. Which kind of sums up their atmosphere, and I mean that in a positive way. The owners, Minas and Electra, are not big tourist operators. They are a delightful couple who take great pleasure in spending time getting to know each and every guest. We chose Electra Pension specifically after looking at what their hotel offered. Actually, it was more about what they didn't offer. The hotel has just 10 rooms. 8 rooms cater for just one couple, one room can have 3 people, and one room can have 4 people. We took 2 things from this: even if the place was fully booked, there would be no more than about 20 people at the hotel and : it wasn't a hotel for young families. Don't get me wrong, we like kids. Just not other people's when we're on holiday. So we figured that this would be a peaceful and relaxing place to stay. And we weren't disappointed.

Electra Pension is located between the hotels I mentioned above and the centre of town. There's a bus stop to and from Chania almost directly outside. It has a large private pool, plenty of sun chairs, and free wireless internet. The accomodation building has 2 floors, with each room having a lovely balcony view out over the ocean. The facilites are simple, but function and extremely clean. I can't stress that last part enough, they were immaculately presented. That's important to us. There are no cooking facilities in the rooms, but when two people can eat a 3 course dinner with wine for 20 Euros at a wonderful local cuisine restaurant every night it's not really a problem. There was a fridge for us to have our drinks and breakfast food. Each room has it's own airconditioning unit, which was really the only "must have" requirement that we had. There is satellite television which shows a range of both Greek and English programmes.

As I said, part of the attraction of Maleme is the opportunity to emmerse yourself into the local community, and this is carried further by Electra and Minas at Electra Pension. We know all about their children, where their olive groves and grape vines are, where they grew up in the area, what they did in their younger days, and we've taken their daughter's dog for a walk. If we could have stayed 2 more days we had an invite to attend a family wedding in the village. Those kinds of experiences are priceless in life. All the other guests that we spoke with during our evening ritual of sitting around the pool with Minas and Electra, sampling their fantastic homemade drinks and food, were very happy with their stay and were already planning their next visit back to the same hotel. That's another benefit of a small hotel, you get to meet and learn about the other guests. It's never been full booked when we've been there. I think at worst there was once 6 couples staying at one time. But we've met Danes, Finns, Italians, Greeks and, of course, other Swedes.

Crete, in my opinion, is excellent value for money. At Electra Pension we paid just 30 Euros per night. It felt like we were stealing from them, the service and treatment was so good. For our 30 Euros a night we also got a free pick up and drop off  and the airport by Minas himself. But, of course, we're "practically family" now. And, on the night we left, we received bottles of their homemade wine and spirits to take back home with us.

Forget the visions of doom and gloom coming out of the British tabloids, the reality is lightyears from that. The people are happy and everything is working just fine. Shops were open, buses ran on time, and everyone was happy to accept our credits cards. The worst thing that could happen to Crete is for tourists not to come. These people are trying hard and we should be helping them by travelling and staying with them.