The out of town location of many of these resort hotels means that they have a higher captive audience for dining than most city centre hotels could hope for. The meal was pretty good, conforming to a well tried formula which we discovered is broadly similar in most of the larger hotels in Crete. There's soup, followed by a hot and cold buffet of starters composed largely of local dishes, then a main course and a dessert buffet with plenty of variety. Ditto, the main course, which on this occasion was veal accompanied by a well executed tricolore of potatoes - plain mash, carrot mash and a delicious green pea mash. But this was only day one, and it occurred to me that after a while one would be only too glad to ring the changes a bit.
Every night there's a different theme in one of the other restaurants.
We had an excellent open air fish grill accompanied by a strange trio of mature gentleman musicians, to whom I gradually warmed as the evening progressed. The fish was very good and the dessert buffet was a showcase of interesting Cretan culinary art. On our last night we went along to the Cretan evening where we tried yet more chargrilled fish, this time a huge lobster and some perfectly cooked seabream. This all took place in a traditional open air Kafenion , complete with a tiny chapel. We went into the town by speedboat, in a style befitting the guests of so illustrious an establishment.