Aghios Pavlos

This is a super place. It’s very rocky, with all sorts of different rocks – marble, quartz, a weird conglomerate, some very dark red or even purple stuff, that I think was used to decorate the walls in Minoan palaces, and may be called something like stearite. I would look it up, so as not to mislead you and not to look a fool, but the internet is pretty wobbly here. There’s even pumice. I suppose it’s all to do with Crete’s eventful geological past, but the contortions of the strata have to be seen to be believed. There are collapsed sea caves and stacks, too. However, there are beaches, one right in front of the hotel, and others you can walk along the headlands and climb down to; the headlands are rocky and bare apart from prickly sea holly type plants and shrubs which I thought were juniper, but seem too prickly.

  

The hotel is really good – there are people staying here who are on a yoga course, and the atmosphere is mostly Mediterranean, but crossed with a bit of new age-y incense and posters of Buddha. The situation is fabulous and the owners are not charging any more than normal for the food, which is quite impressive, since there aren’t really any other convenient places to eat, and they have a pretty captive clientele. The food is good, too.The only complaint I’ve got is that the shower cubicle is tiny, so we’re just using the bathroom as a wet room, and as it’s so hot, it dries off in no time.

                         Aghios Pavlos Hotel

It’s good place for people watching as well as swimming. A German bloke was showing two nubile ladies a couple of stones – they looked pretty average for round here but he kept them talking for ages and they seemed genuinely interested. Phil was puzzling over that for ages. Then there was the English couple, younger than us but certainly well into their forties, where the woman was teaching the man “Scissors, paper, stone.” This raised a number of questions. Who doesn’t know how to play it?  How long have they been a couple – not long surely, if they don’t know things like that about each other; but how long are they likely to last if she’s reduced to teaching him how to play it, on holiday in a place like this?  Also, a large proportion of the guests are German, who are completely fazed by the British convention of saying hello to anyone you meet walking outside of a town.

   

                                       Looking out from the hotel

The sea is a bit dead, after the Red Sea, but there are a few different sorts of small fish, and sea urchins, and I got very mildly nettled by a jelly fish. I would love to see an octopus, but no luck. I think they’re quite shy. It doesn’t matter. I love sea swimming.

We are so pleased with this place that we’ve asked to stay an extra night. I reminds us of the Amalfi coast, but as it was forty four years ago. Only it’s a lot less lush.