(Archanes, Crete, Greece)

We decided to do one more day trip from Heraklion. But, having already visited the most obvious nearby destinations, where would we go?

Chania might have appeared to be the obvious choice. It was in all the guidebooks, and many people consider it the most beautiful city in Crete. But it would also mean a round-trip total of 5 hours (or more) on buses. As we would soon be spending 10 hours on a plane, that wasn’t very appealing. We decided to pick a destination based solely on frequency of bus service and travel time. That was how we ended up buying tickets to Archanes.

Archanes isn’t really a high profile destination. I hadn’t read anything about it during my last-minute research on Crete. But it was only 30 minutes by bus, and the buses ran every hour or so. We thought we’d check it out, hoping that we might see a typical small town in Crete. It also appeared to be in the mountains.

Initial impressions: there are a lot of colourful houses. And the streets are steep. Very steep. However…there’s almost nobody here! It was almost spookily quiet. Heraklion is the bustling capital of Crete, and both Agios Nikolaos and Rethymno are well-known destinations on the water. But Archanes seemed to be slumbering, at least until high season arrived.

After wandering the upper levels of the town, we returned to the attractive main square and picked a restaurant for lunch. We decided to continue with our new focus on mezes. But a couple of things may have gotten lost in the translation. We were expecting one of the dishes to be a saganaki-type fried/flaming cheese, but it was really just a spicy dip based on cheese (and likely garlic).

Perhaps we were spoiled by our experiences at Xalali, but the mezes in Archanes didn’t enthrall us quite as much. Still, it was very cheap, even by Cretan standards. We might have been better served by going with something from the grill. But we weren’t really that hungry.

Archanes is nice to look at. It recently won an award for being the second best preserved traditional village in Europe. It might also be more suitable for a car-based vacation, as we discovered that many of the local sights (hiking trails, wineries, etc.) are a little outside of the town itself.

Could there possibly be more on Crete? Yes, there is!