The Mail — Bel Mooney, the well known journalist, author and broadcaster, visited Crete with with her daughter and her two grandchildren and wrote about her experience in Travel Mail.
“There are some places you find yourself returning to again and again – sometimes by accident rather than design. I first visited the beautiful Elounda area of northern Crete in 1992 when my best friend begged me to join her on a ‘girlie’ holiday.
I loved the place so much I went again, once with another close girlfriend and then with my (then) husband Jonathan. I found myself visiting the ancient site of Knossos and Spinalonga, the island just off the coast of Elounda, for a third time.
So back we went two years later, this time taking my husband’s mother and stepfather as a special treat for them. I remember smiling to think that I had always trumpeted my wish to see new places, yet there I was, back in Elounda once again.
Jump to 2016 and life has changed totally. I’ve remarried and become a proud grandmother pushing 70. I needed a rest.
One day my daughter suggested a family holiday – my husband Robin and me with Kitty, her husband Ed and their children, Chloe, three, and six-month-old baby Max.
Naturally I agreed. Who wouldn’t want to spend time with the grandchildren? It was then that Kitty told me she’d researched a resort, which ran a daily kids’ club – essential for weary parents who want some time off. Book it! I said.
And where was this lovely hotel? Between the villages of Plaka and Elounda in Crete.
The good news is that after a gap of many years, I found the area as delightful as ever. The coastline was more built-up, but that’s inevitable and, looking at the coast from a boat, it’s clear the new hotel developments are tastefully done. I didn’t revisit the one I’d loved before, but embraced the new.
In Crete, all of these dreams came true and so many more “.
