[June 2025] On our third day in Agios Nikolaos, Crete, Greece, we took a Trenino tour outside the town.
A Trenino is a small train.
It’s a train-shaped tourist bus, common in tourist areas.
In the pamphlets we got at the tourist information centre, we saw the one for Trenino (Little Train Tours), which looked quite interesting and reasonably priced.
The tour just around the town of Agios Nikolaos takes 40 minutes, but the tour along Mirabello Bay, with its scenic views on the outskirts, takes 80 minutes.
There’s even a 4.5-hour tour that takes you further inland to a village.
We chose the 80-minute tour.
It costs €14 per person.
We arrived at the boarding point near the port early to make the designated time, and found a couple waiting ahead of us.
Apparently, the trip would only go ahead if there were at least six people, so we waited there as well.
In the end, two more couples showed up, and the trip went ahead.
We were happy for a moment, but soon realized that this was a bad choice.
The ride was extremely uncomfortable.
The hard plastic seats rattled violently against my buttocks as the bus drove along.
To top it all off, the bus passed through a fairly major road, with cars and trucks passing by, and the air was extremely bad for those riding in the Trenino with its open windows.
The bus advertised itself as passing through the beautiful Mirabello Coast, but the ocean wasn’t particularly close, and we only caught occasional glimpses.
And so, finally, we arrived at our destination: the car park.
The view from here is certainly great.
We expected we’d see the famous island of Spinalonga nearby, but we could barely make it out without using a telephoto lens.
And we just turned around here and headed back.
When the Trenino turned around, my husband said, “Eh? Is that all?” with a puzzled look on his face, which made me laugh.
We had originally planned to join the Trenino’s extensive 4.5-hour tour, but naturally we decided not to.
That’s not to say there was anything wrong with the company; they had an English-speaking guide on board, and they were doing the best they could.
This shows that the Trenino medium has its limits.
We actually had planned to grill some meat we’d bought in our Airbnb that day, but because we were disappointed with the trip, to make up for it, we went to Se Meli for dinner nearby.
