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Early start this morning to catch the ferry Preveli (ANEK Lines) to Crete leaving at 5:00 am. We are now more experienced at packing our bags and carrying them on and off ferries and quickly found seats in the economy lounge at the rear of the boat on deck 6. You can get coffees and snacks in the lounge and we settled in with a coffee, coke and toasted ham sandwiches. But not satisfied with the seats we had, we went looking to upgrade so moved to a window seat and then again to a smaller lounge near the dining room to take advantage of the power plug we found there - which meant we could use the computer, surf the net and recharge iPhones and iPods (very important).

It was a particularly long trip from Rhodes to Iraklio in Crete, stopping at Karpathos, Kassos and Sitia port in Crete, with each stop taking about 45 minutes to unload and load passengers, trucks and cars. All up, the trip took about 11 hours and we arrived in Iraklio around 6:00pm. We were pumped and ready to walk to the hotel we had booked and had backpacks on and were ready to roll. Once on dry land however, we took the first available taxi for the 400 metre trip to the hotel.

Iraklio Port

The Lato Boutique hotel in Iraklio looked pretty nice and we found we had been upgraded to their suite with a sea view (whoo hoo!) overlooking the port. Very nice, with Alex having his own room with surround windows and and balcony access. The bed was kingsize, and a real one at that - not two singles pushed together. Oh happy day. We were pretty tired and so after freshening up, went up to the terrace and enjoyed some of the better greek food we had experienced, along with a local rose.

Next morning, picked up our rental car for use while on Crete and found we had been upgraded once again. Instead of the Peugeot 207, we were given a 308, so more room, more power and better A/C.