Crete!

Sensatori Resort Crete

If you've been following my Instagram you will have seen I spent the last week in Crete staying at the Sensatori Resort & it was the best week away! It was so nice to just be able to chill & relax. It initially was just going to be me & my cousin Sindy but then her sister Jess managed to book on to join us. I went down to Manchester last Wednesday night as Sindy lives there & we flew from Manchester to Heraklion. Our flight was at 8am on the Thursday.

I was panicking in the morning though as we didn't get to the airport till 6 & the gate closes at 7:15am I thought we were going to miss our flight as there were queues for check in & security. As we were going up the escalator to get to security Sindy said excuse me please to this woman who had 2 kids & she was so horrible. She replied back "NO! I can't move my kids" her kids weren't even that young around 7/8 they could've easily moved to the side! Then she ended up sitting next to me & stayed at the resort & was sitting next to us again on the way back!

We got a coach to the resort which is in the strangest place, buried in a village on Lyttos beach. It's only a 20/25 minute drive from the airport. The day we got there the weather was horrible it was pouring down! I'd been checking the weather since the day we booked & I was hoping BBC weather was lying when it said heavy rain. I wanted to cry & come home! The weather was horrible till Sunday when it was nice. It was shorts weather back home which makes such a change since it was Grand National weekend & it's usually horrible!

Seeing all the sun beds laid out by the pools but not being able to lie in them cos of the rain wasn't great & we couldn't get WiFi in our room so had to go to the lobby which was the other side of the resort meant we had to walk out in the room to get there. Luckily things did get better. It didn't rain on the Friday or Saturday but the sun didn't come out till Sunday!

As much as I love green the tiles in the bathroom are horrible!!

(Balcony photos taken on the last day most definitely didn't look like that when we got there!)

Our room was really nice & could easily sleep another person. This was going to be our room even before Jess booked on. Bed was so comfy & spacious!
Jess got there an hour before us so we met her in the restaurant for lunch.

After a 4 hour flight & being up since 5am this was lunch.

The food was actually really good which I wasn't expecting. I could easily do a separate blog post of all the food I ate. We got full board which meant we got 3 meals a day with drinks. Water, soft drinks, tea, coffee, beer & house wine. There's 7 restaurants in the resort, main buffet where breakfast, lunch & dinner is served everyday, Tex Mex Mexican that has lunch & dinner, Red Saffron Tavern, & Five Flavour Thai Oriental serve dinner. Then there's 3 other restaurants which you pay & get 15€ discount. Sugiyama Sushi Japanese which I really wanted to go to but was closed, Aroma Stone Grill where you cook your food on a hot plate & A La Carte which has a menu designed by a Michelin-starred chef.

Breakfast was probably my favourite meal of the day the choices for the buffet was so good! There was fry up, so you could have bacon, tomatoes, mushrooms, sausages, eggs anyway you want scrambled, boiled, omelette, fried, poached, crepes, waffles, cereal, fruit, porridge, pastries, cake, bread. The choices were endless!

The waffles were so good but they only had them for 2 days. I wanted them everyday! It was the best breakfast being able to have a bit of everything. We ate so much fruit during this holiday, probably a whole pineapple a day, 2 apples & an orange as we had fruit after every meal if there was fruit! The oranges were so good & juicy.

Red Saffron Tavern

Starter

Buffet Main

Dessert

We're not a fan of Greek desserts, everything seems to be soaked in syrup far too sweet! The only thing we ate from this was the fruit & yogurt!

Lunch

The weekend we were there was actually Greek Easter so on the Sunday the main restaurant was closed for lunch & instead Red Saffron was open with an open BBQ.

Was in a meat coma after this! Chicken, pork, beef, lamb, fish too much meat!

Traditional Greek entertainment

Five Flavour Thai Oriental Restaurant

Hot & Sour Soup

Satay Chicken Skewers

Spring Rolls

Pad Thai

Thai green curry, fried rice, boiled rice & duck in hoi-sin sauce

Mango sticky rice, banana & coconut pudding & banana & pineapple fritters

The chicken in my pad Thai & Jess' curry was really dry, definitely needed some sauce with it even though her's was in a curry. Sindy's duck was properly the best out of the 3 that was really nice, good flavour. We didn't get the dessert as the rice in the mango sticky rice was really hard like raw rice & the banana & coconut thing had a really weird name that I can't remember now!

Tex Mex

Dinner

We thought this was my nacho starter even though it was missing the chilli con carne... 

Chilli con carne nachos, quinoa salad, quesadilla

Mixed chicken & beef fajitas, steak & ribs

Again the chicken in my fajitas was so dry I had to put so much sour cream on it! Also Jess' steak wasn't even steak it was like foul?

Mexican flan, brownie - more like chocolate cake! Can't remember what the pasty thing was but we didn't like any of the desserts apart from the ice cream

Lunch

Buffet starter

Buffalo chicken wings, tacos, & burritos. Dry chicken burrito!! 

Aroma Stone Grill

This was the only paid restaurant we went to while we were & was definitely worth it. It was so good!!

Jess got tuna steak

Me & Sindy got the same mixed seafood, giant shrimp, tuna & salmon

Creme brulee 

They put bibs on us & the woman took the head of the shrimp for me but I clearly look unamused by it.

The stone was 400°C I was so scared of burning myself on it I asked for extra plates so we could eat off that. It was so good the fish was so fresh & I cooked it exactly how I wanted it! It only cost me 14€ with the discount we got!

We were dressed like the seasons - Jess winter, Sindy autumn & me spring. It was actually freezing at night the temperature drops down to single figures & clear skies!

The Resort

All these were taken on my Nikon J2

There was a photographer one night while we were sitting in the lobby who took our photo, & made us pose with our hand under our chin but I didn't manage to get a photo of it on my phone! We didn't buy them as he was charging 7€ each or 25€ for all 6 & a CD.

This looks like a photo they'd use on the website for the resort & was taken on my Nexus 4!

All these were taken using my Nexus 4, which surprisingly takes some really good photos!

On our last night they had a Lady Gaga tribute act who was actually pretty good. It was a tough crowd though whenever she said sing no-one sang she even went up to Jess with the mic at one point and she came right up to my face & said she was going to pose for me but I couldn't get onto my video quick enough!

The resort is so nice, I wish we could've stayed longer! I'm so glad we booked it & we got it for such a good price as well. Me & Sindy paid £435 each full board, Jess paid an extra £150 as she bought her flights & paid for the room separate. 

We went to the gym & did a gym class everyday. Some days even more than 1 class. I had a PT session & was the only one who did boot camp on the beach so that was practically a PT session. I wish I could work out & run along the beach everyday! Running on sand was just how I imagined hard & thought I was going to break my ankle at one point! I even got to do archery on the last day before we flew back. I wanted to do it everyday since we got there but it kept getting booked up.

 It was such a good week especially when the weather improved. I would definitely recommend staying at Sensatori Resort Crete. They have different resorts all over the world as well in Jamaica, Ibiza, Sharm el-Sheikh & other parts which I really want to go to as well! The resort has everything you need we only left 1 day to go into the city to shop, but there's shops out of the resort in the village, supermarkets that you can buy souvenirs. There's a sports bar across the road which is good if you're not full board & wanted some cheap drinks. I only ended up spending an extra 30€ which I could've easily not have spent. The only downfall is the WiFi not reaching to our room other than that I have no complaints - food was good and staff were nice! But the pool water is salty which I wasn't expecting. We only went in it once though on the last day as it wasn't hot enough. Lytoss beach isn't that nice either it's really rocky but they were cleaning it up ready for when the tourists start going.

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Some of the photos were taken on my Nikon 1 J2 camera, my Nexus 4 phone, Jess's iPhone 6 & Sindy's Samsung Galaxy S4 which why the picture quality isn't consistent throughout this post. None of the photos have been edited, all uploaded exactly as they were taken. Some were also taken with a selfie stick on self timer!