Is he landing in the car park?
It’s early summer so it must be time for another trip to Crete. This is my fourth in as many years. On previous visits I’ve based myself at Chania in the western end of the island (with side-visits to Paleaochora), but this time I’m having four nights in Heraklion. It’s the largest city in Crete and lies on the centre of the north coast (all of the largest cities and towns are on the north coast). I visited Heraklion a couple of times already – once on my first trip to Crete when I did an excursion to Knossos and the archeological museum in Heraklion, and the second time was last year, when I did a day trip to Heraklion on the public bus.
Given that I was going to spend the first few days in Heraklion it made sense to fly in to Heraklion airport rather than Chania. A number of airlines do that route – step forward, Ryanair – but my experience with them was so uncomfortable in 2016 that I preferred to not use them. BA do flights to Heraklion, from Gatwick, so I planned the trip to drive to Heathrow the day before, do a Premier Inn Sleep-Park-Fly stay and leave the car at Heathrow, get the coach from Heathrow to Gatwick, and fly to Heraklion. Then the flight home, which would be from Chania, would be back to Heathrow where I’d left the car.
So far, that’s all worked out well. I drove to Heathrow on Tuesday and then had an afternoon in London. Wednesday was a long day – up early to make sure I got the car into the car park system in time for the coach to Gatwick and then the flight to Heraklion. Unfortunately that was delayed (late in-bound aircraft) so we arrived at Heraklion rather later than originally planned – about 9pm instead of 8:15. What with waiting for bags, etc, it was gone 9:30 before I stepped out of the airport. And then the fun really began.
I’d havered between getting a taxi to the hotel or using the bus. My original plan had been the bus as I’ve heard bad things about Greek taxi drivers, but there was some uncertainty as to whereabouts in the city the bus would go – it was likely to be a city bus rather than the long-distance KTEL coaches that I’m used to – so I’d decided to get a taxi. (This meant getting Euros at the airport, of course.) Then I ran into a big problem – there were no taxis! In fact there was a sign at the taxi bay, “Taxi Strike”! Not good news, at approaching 10pm when I was feeling tired. However, away in the distance I could see an illuminated sign for the Bus Station, so I dragged my bags over there and found a ticket shack where I bought a bus ticket into town for €1.60, fora bus “in 10 minutes….”. I shouldn’t have been so doubtful – the bus (#6) duly turned up, we sat for about 5 minutes, and then it trundled off. I was checking progress with Google Maps on the phone, but just when I was thinking we were at a good spot to jump off, the driver announced that we had indeed reached “The Centre”. So it was then about a 15 minute walk with my bags to the hotel, where everything went well. Then, despite, the time, I went back out for drink or two.
Next post – first impressions of Heraklion.