Crete: Delicious food and luscious lakes!
I would best describe the resort as modern, with beautiful features, large well-appointed rooms and an eccentric Greek/Arabic style which I really liked. The staff are beyond welcoming and very helpful. The resort has a fabulous buffet restaurant with delicious and varied food. Even fussy eaters (one of my children) loved the food and found something to his limited tastes (i.e. they had lots of meat and chips). The unfussy one also really enjoyed the food and we all found ourselves eating varied, fresh tasty meals every time we went to the buffet. There are also four a la carte restaurants, of which you get to dine at twice a week included in your half board deal. Unfortunately, as we visited early in the season (the first day it opened this year), the seafood restaurant was not open yet – they explained that this was because it’s situated on the beach, so the weather has to be good. Fair enough, no one wants to eat crab in the dark when it’s windy! We tried the Greek, which was excellent (go hungry!) and the Asian which was ok. I think the main issue with the Asian restaurant was that again as it was early in the season, they hadn’t many of the ingredients in stock yet. Friends who we were there with and who arrived later than us tried the Italian a la carte restaurant and declared it amazing.
Georgopoulos is relatively close to the resort and is a pleasant 30-minute walk down the beach. There are several tavernas closer to the resort along the beach in both directions so if you don’t want to walk so far you can stop in one of those for lunch. All the local tavernas served similar delicious food and really great prices. Hubby did the beer test and found that beer was very tasty and cheap in this region!
We ventured further one day to Lake Kournas, a very pretty inland lake with tavernas overlooking its beautiful waters and pedalos a plenty for rent. The walk was slightly longer than anticipated but definitely worth the hike. It probably took around an hour and a half to get there but we did walk at a very slow pace and admired the flora and fauna on the way (and every single dandelion and insect – people will small children will know what this feels like!)
All in all, I can highly recommend Anemos Luxury resort and this region of Crete. I really enjoyed the food; the kids loved the kids club and pools. I think perhaps in retrospect early April may be a bit early for Crete as it was quite chilly in the evenings and a few tavernas and facilities at the hotel were not open yet. However this didn’t ruin our holiday in the slightest – it just made me want to go back!