Tales from Crete | 2

Last day on Crete for Elena's Group Travel this year.

So our first trip with Elenas Grupperejser ApS is slowly coming to an end. It has been a pleasure to have our 8 guests visiting down here and very gratifying that the small group incredibly quickly turned into such a kind of small close-knit family. There has been a fantastically nice atmosphere from day one, so it's no big deal to be a tour guide for such a group.

I actually think that I have infected the participants with my own love for Crete, because they have all already said that they definitely want to come here again. I don't know if it will just be Elena's group trips or if they choose to go down here on their own, but it could be really fun to take the same group on another trip down here at some point.

I have no doubt that the guests, where only one participant has been to Crete before, have all gained a lot of new impressions and exciting experiences with them in their luggage. But it is now also great that I myself am constantly finding new places and discovering new sides of Crete even after 13 years, when I have come here several times every year, and stayed here for a long time. This year I have found my new best friend, Manolis Tsouris, who is an artist with a capital K. He carves everything in wood, (olive wood of course) from the smallest utility items to the largest sculptures. He himself says that in his workshop in the small town of Topolia in Western Crete you can experience what happens when "wood meets madness". Whether Manolis is mad or not in his expression I cannot say, but one thing is certain – he is very different from everyone else I know. Even his packaging is a work of art in itself and nothing is left to chance.

A visit to his workshop starts with a cup of Greek coffee and a bottle of water if you feel like it, and then you can walk around and see all the unique works of art, both large and small, that he produces over the winter. Should you feel like buying something in his shop, you get an experience far beyond the usual just in the way he wraps the goods. But a good piece of advice if you visit his workshop is to set aside plenty of time, because it quickly takes an hour or more just to see his shop, and even longer if you also want to get some stories along the way about the long-haired and full-bearded wizard with the warm twinkle in his eye. Well, yes, and then you also have to have the patience to wait for the goods you buy to be wrapped in your very own and very personal way.

Today we are going to a wine tasting at Dourakis Vingård, where the guests will be able to taste and select some of the wines that we will have very soon in Elena's store in Denmark, so I think everyone is very much looking forward to that. Tonight we end in typical Greek fashion, with roasted whole lamb on skewers and live music to the view of the sunset over the Mediterranean, before the guests head back home tomorrow.

Have a great weekend everyone and stay tuned to the blog where there will be news from the Greek as early as next Friday.