I took the picture above on Saturday evening, a day when many locals come out to socialise in huddles along the promenade wall. The four women were sat opposite where I’m staying and were there for hours. They didn’t stop talking once.

It made me think of how Rethymno used to be and what it’s now become – a major Northern European holiday destination, baggage and all. It was good to see in the four women that some things haven’t changed even though so much has, and it got me thinking about holidays, particularly what’s on offer in places like this and countless others around the Mediterranean Sea.

Holidays mean different things to different people, although a change of scenery and a bit of rest and relaxation (R&R) are probably the features most expect. And a break from work if you have it. In Rethymno you’ve got the lot. If, for example, your idea of rest and relaxation is to do nothing much at all, it’s easily done here.

Along a couple of kilometres of golden sand there are literally thousands of beds on which to lie, the sea at your feet before you and behind you, across a busy road, bars, restaurants, supermarkets and shops selling all kinds of holiday stuff, like sun cream, hats, airbeds and souvenirs to take home.

There’s even a place where you can dip your feet in a tank and have fish nibble off your dry skin. There are a few tattoo parlours too if you fancy a permanent holiday keepsake, or to add to the ones you have already.

If you opt for a beach bed, all of which come with an umbrella, some of the various strips on which they sit are leased to the bars and restaurants just across the road. Apart from going to the loo or having a dip (or doing both at once), if you don’t want to you don’t have to get up at all because waiters cruise around taking orders all day long and into the evening. Within minutes they’re back with a tray of whatever you want. For some that’s all boxes ticked.

For the more adventurous who like all that but would like to see a bit more without walking or because they can’t, there are big red double decker buses with open tops that promise to show you ‘all the sites in Rethymno in just 90 minutes’.

Because they’re so big they can’t always get close, such as to the castle and the pretty harbour, and certainly not down the warren of narrow streets in the old town.

There’s another, smaller option. It’s still a bit limited but looks like more fun, the sort of thing that kids probably love, although I’ve only seen adults on it in the week that I’ve been here as it snakes its merry way around the bits of the town it can get to.

It’s a little red train, pulled by a steam engine modelled on those you see in old westerns, although with a diesel engine. It’s a bit more toy town than Santa Fe and, though more slender than a double decker, it can’t chug through the old town’s streets either.

If all of that’s your kind of holiday but you have a taste and the energy for a bit of a thrill on top, and the money (it’s expensive), there’s the option to sit on a jet ski and roar around the bay, or get strapped into a harness beneath a parachute and drift high above the sea as you’re pulled around the bay by a speedboat. Or you can sit on an inflatable yellow banana or teacup and bounce around the bay at high speed. It must be pretty exhilarating because you can hear the screams of the passengers above the roar of the speedboats, and they’re pretty loud.

So all that’s one version of R&R, or rather a few on a particular scale, from maxed out all day horizontal to the bus, train and inflatables etc. Actually, I forgot to mention bikes, which you can hire and pedal all along the promenade for miles. Some do but I think there are many more who prefer to lie down all day. To be fair, when it’s 33°, as it was a few days ago, that’s probably the best option.

None of that stuff appeals to me and if my description sounds slightly mocking, it’s not meant to. A couple of kilometres and a few thousand occupied beds day in day out is living proof that most people come here for that, and why not? It suits them if not me but it does sadden me a bit, having seen the once pristine beach before the hotels and associated clutter lined up beside it, where once there was a scattering of fishermen’s boats and their homes.

I probably sound a bit of a curmudgeonly old fart bemoaning the obvious pleasure the place gives to so many. I still love the city too, just not that bit.

In a similar way to seeing the four women chatting for hours on the wall, I had a refreshing taste of the days before Rethymno became what it is today, or at least a large part of it, when I hit the town behind all the hotels and bars this morning in search of a cobbler.

I’ve an old pair of canvas shoes, the shoe version of what we used to call baseball boots/pumps. One of the metal eyelets for the laces had come adrift, and the canvas that’s left where the hole is has split. Not having found anyone in Blighty who could fix them, the only advice being to bin them, I brought them with me, sure that a Greek cobbler could.

And sure enough I found one down an alley that looked the part. It was one of those cluttered, time warped kind of places, which I learnt later had been home to Giorgio’s cobbling business for years.

You could tell from the clutter, much as you might from the rings of a tree. There were boxes that looked like they might have been set down on the shelves on day one but never touched since or discarded, even though there’d been no use for the contents, because one day there just might be.

With the eye of a professional the first thing he looked at were the soles and, seeing that there was life in them yet, he then spent an age rummaging through his boxes of eyelets. He knew where they all were but his professionalism didn’t extend to order. They were all over the place but it didn’t matter because he had it all ordered in his head. He knew exactly where everything was.

“I haven’t got the right size” he said after a while, his eyebrows raised with a look that said sorry while a mind full of 30 years’ worth of cobbling worked on a plan B.

To cut a long story short he spent 20 minutes with a needle and cotton fixing the fray, and a small pair of pliers with which he refashioned the the damaged eyelets, joined them together with his punch, adding a different sized one on top for extra strength.

When I remonstrated with him after asking him how much I owed and he’d said nothing, he’d explained that he hadn’t charged because he liked that I spoke to him in Greek, flawed though I know it was.

He asked only that I tell all my friends, which won’t be much use since none live in Rethymno, but if you’re ever here and need a cobbler, here’s where to go:

Veneri, Timotheou Venieri 4, Rethymno 741 33.

That’s the Crete I remember and it’s still kicking behind the scenes.

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