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Rethymno

Rethymno Harbour

Rethymno Harbour

I spent a day in Rethymno during my holiday. In some respects it’s like a smaller version of Chania – Venetian harbour, Old Town, new town behind it. However there were some differences.

I went there on a public bus. They ran every hour from the bus station in the modern part of Chania, the journey took about an hour and the fare was €6.20 each way. The bus was actually a coach with effective air-conditioning (the outside temperature in mid-afternoon was just over 30º) and was comfortable and clean. Best of all there were few tourists on it – the great majority of passengers were Greeks, and local Greeks at that.

In the end I wasn’t sure what to make of Rethymno. At one point I had nearly booked a hotel there rather than in Chania because there were ferries from Rethymno to Santorini and other islands – there are none from Chania – but I decided to stick with Chania because it was much closer to the airport; however, I had been wondering if I had made the right decision. After spending most of a day in Rethymno I decided that I had. Some parts of Rethymno were very attractive, but it was all rather smaller-scale that Chania – not surprisingly, as the population is about half that of Chania’s. This meant that the Old Town especially was smaller and was less well separated from the modern town. One of the things I liked about Chania was that Old Town was big enough to comprehensively surround the harbour and to be several lanes deep, and there’s no vehicular traffic along the lanes – they’re pedestrian only. In Rethymno, however, a number of the streets in the Old Town had traffic along them, and this made for less relaxing and immersive experience – you could never just wander, you had to be constantly watching for the traffic.

The harbour was also smaller, especially the old harbour, but was nonetheless attractive.

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