Limin Hersonissos, Crete

On our first full day at the second hotel, we drove into Limin Hersonissos for dinner. We asked the front desk for a recommendation. She called her favorite place to find out if it was open yet (i.e. on summer hours where they would start serving as early as 6 p.m.). They were open. She marked the spot on our map and we headed out.

Finding the restaurant was not hard at all. We parked near a local supermarket. Earlier in the day we had visited a different store with covered parking, but this store wasn't so cool.

Coveted because covered!

Anyway, we walked five minutes to the restaurant, Taverna Sokaki, and were greeted by the owner/hostess/waitress. She offered us any table in the place, including an open air room across the narrow street. I guess in the summer business is booming and they have a lot of customers. We stayed on our side of the street.

We weren't sure what to order. Since it was a Friday and hence we weren't eating meat, we asked what sort of options we had. The lady said she'd give us a good sampling of a variety of meatless items: eggplant salad, seafood roe salad, olives (of course), yogurt sauce, bread, cheese pie, spinach pie, grape-leaf-wrapped rice, fried cheese, some shrimp, and a little calamari.

L enjoys spaghetti while we enjoy everything else on offer!

The calamari was in fact a short tentacle grilled to perfection. This was the first time I had octopus in such an obvious preparation. It was seven or eight inches of tentacle with the little suckers still on it. It was also delicious. The shrimp still had the heads and shells, so we had to do some shucking to get to the food. We enjoyed everything, including the half liter of local wine. The kids had spaghetti.

Then the surprise came with a dessert that we hadn't ordered. It was a milk cake with ice cream, both drizzled with honey. It was a nice, tasty surprise that wasn't on the bill as far as we could tell (though the bill was in Greek). We tipped very handsomely and made our goodbyes.

We walked out and down to the seashore. The harbor area is built on a small ridge, so the beach and sea are about 20 feet below street level. We saw one set of stairs to go down but decided to keep our shoes sand-free for the evening.

J enjoys the view

Harbor

We walked along the street instead. The street had a lot of bars and clubs and restaurants on one side with covered dining/drinking areas on the sea-side of the road. Everything was very quiet. In addition to being early April, it was also early evening. No one was out clubbing yet.

We walked a ways and discovered some of the Roman ruins from the days when Limin Hersonissos was a thriving Roman port city.

J admires the old mosaic

Mosaic of guy fishing...maybe it's an instruction manual?

Ruins a few blocks inland

The city still has plenty of businesses all over. We came across a bakery that looked inviting so we stopped in and got some treats for the next day's breakfast. Another short walk through the side streets brought us back to our car. We drove off to our hotel and had some wonderful sleep, ready for another day of adventure.