I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move. RL Stevenson

What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare? Welsh poet, William Henry Davies

Saturday, September 12, 2015

8/2015 GREECE - CRETE



18 – 27 May 2015
CRETE

IRAKLIO/HERAKLIO & PHAESTOS/PHAISTOS
Arriving from Santorini early evening off the ferry, my booked Greco Hotel is right in the centre of Greece’s fifth largest city so it was easy to wander about the old town along with the crowds enjoying a warm summer evening, I find St Mark’s Basilica/then mosque/ now art gallery hosting a free concert of classical guitar – lovely refined music, politely listened to by an appreciative audience – a world away from Santorini’s photo snapping tourists. Next day sees an obligatory trip out to Knossos, the Minoan’s huge palace. However the discovering archaeologist, Sir Arthur Evans spent 35 years excavating and reconstructing parts of the palace, deciding create his own versions of restoration meaning that most buildings and relics here are not genuine. So I did find it a little amusing that no one was telling the tourists this as I watched tour group after tour group from the cruise ships, who were coming in their hundreds, photographing anything within their line of sight. Busing back to town I met Brendan from Ireland, who seemed very well informed about our Australian prime minster as he asked me if our Prime Minister really was a clown?! Visiting the Heraklion museum was a real highlight with artifacts spanning 5000 years that were well curated, exhibits were in great shape, great explanations and I learned a lot about the Minoans who were certainly a very busy civilisation ruling over Southern Europe 4000 years ago.
Walking the sights of Heraklio, I met up several times with a Mexican/Canadian (also staying at our hotel) who is planning to go south to visit another Minoan palace, Phaestos & then on to Matala tomorrow, assuring me it can be done in a day. So up early the next day, I join him on the 7.30am bus out of Heraklio to arrive at Phaistos several hours later. This site is second only in size to Knossos but without Evans’ vivid imagination making it a lovely, authentic site with very few tourists & great views across the Mesara Plain. This is where the mysterious Phaestos Disk (that I saw in the museum yesterday) was excavated http://www.world-mysteries.com/sar_9.htm   Checking bus schedules, my new friend offers to shout us a taxi down to Matala where Zeus swam ashore with the kidnapped Europa on his back. It’s also the site of Neolithic caves originally used as tombs by the Romans and then used as low cost housing by travellers (read hippies) in the 60s to be immortalised by Joni Mitchell in the song, Carey. Now the hippies have gone & the hike over the rocks to wild & windy Red Beach made it just the spot for a great late lunch with very few tourists venturing that far from Matala village.
NOTE: don’t ask me about the different spelling of the cities – it’s the same for most of them on Crete!


21 – 25 May
CHANIA/HANIA
Ho hum, another day, another Venetian Port!

Heading over to the north west of Crete, to Chania and the Kydonia Rooms are in the old town and very close to the waterfront.  My window overlooks a garden of the nearby Archaeological Museum, which of course deserves a visit – usual mix of artefacts but it does include some Roman mosaic floors and the building itself is a Venetian monastery. Walking along the sea walls of the Venetian harbour to the restored Venetian Lighthouse and at the other end of town. I am still trying to find confirmation the Rhodes ferry, asking at various ticket offices but without much success so we all agree that it might only become visible on online timetables after the weekend. Making plans to walk the Samaria Gorge on Friday, the pension owner is more than happy to store bags for 24 hrs and keep ‘our’ room for when we get back. Chania is lovely with all the perks of a cruise destination, with some style. Dinner at Portes, a flash laneway restaurant specialising in Cretan specialities was fab, including complimentary bread and desserts unlike Santorini, where you were lucky not to be charged to look the olives! So I’m certainly enjoying the benefits of a popular tourist destination with a gentle and individual Cretan influence.

22 -23 May 2015
SAMARIA GORGE
‘a hike through this stupendous gorge is an experience to remember’ & it’s my birthday
I read that more than 170,000 people walk the Samaria Gorge each year, averaging out to 1000 per day in high season, only opening a month ago! We make plans to let all of those keen walkers start ahead of us, get to sleep in & catch the later bus to Omalos, which was a lovely drive down south climbing up into the White Mountains.  Arriving at the trail head, Xyloskalo on the Omalos Plateau, everyone on board was quickly off & away but I tarry, taking loads of fotos of the fab views and find a walking ‘stick’ (a bamboo stick I had carried back from Red Beach got left behind in Heraklio) to aid me as the path is very rocky, with step after step after step all downhill. Meeting an Irishman coming up? the hill who tells me about a great pension in Agia Roumelo and he is soon followed by gangs of keen walkers with walking poles clicking against the rocks, as they power UP the gorge, whilst I step on down & down the 16km of a well maintained trail with informative markers and notes, potable water & rest stops strategically placed. Passing reassuring park officers with their first aid horses I see carry out two injured walkers. All very well organised, even down to checking off tickets at entry to be matched again at the exit to check that everyone who starts the walk is accounted for.  At 16km, Samaria Gorge is supposedly the longest in Europe, carved out by the river that flows between the peaks of Mts Avlimaniko (1858m) and Volakias (2115m), with the span of the gorge varying from 150m to right down to 3m, the famous ‘Sidiroportes’ or Iron Gates, whose vertical walls reaching 500m at their highest points and were so hard to photograph to do any justice to just how fabulous it all was. The trail passes Samaria village, whose inhabitants were all relocated when the gorge became a national park, and is the perfect pot for a lunch break. The gorge officially ends at the 14km mark, and it’s a further 2km to reach the seaside village of Agia Roumeli with a very pebbly beach on the Libyan Sea that was icy cold but so restorative for my tired feet.
Walking through Cypress forests, then Calabrian pine forests, oaks, maples and many endemic flora still in bloom was a real treat although I missed seeing the endangered Kri Kri goat (I hope that wasn’t one I saw being butchered when we passed through the village at the end!). After a night in Agia Roumeli, there was a great ferry trip around the lovely coastline to Chora Sfakion, from where there is a bus back through the other side of the mountains and Chania, where our ‘room already has your bags installed’ was waiting.
FACT: During the Second World War, after Germany invaded Crete, the Samaria Gorge was used to shelter rebels along with the Allied forces who retreated from Crete through another nearby gorge to safety.

23-24 May 2015
CHANIA/HANIA
Next day was spent recovering from that gorge walk, with aging knees & hips feeling jarred from the continual stepping down.  A decision is made to stay an extra day here as the room is great, the town is very peaceful, being large enough to absorb the cruise crowds without being too annoying and still plenty of interesting sights (& shops) with that great Venetian harbour. Walked along the old Venetian city walls, that still enclose the Venetian quarter of town, visited St Nicholas Church/was a mosque/now a church again that had great lighting effects to illustrate the architectural changes each religion made to the building to make it their own. Today there was a street protest by a very mixed and large crowd, but when I asked our room’s owner what it was about he replied, “these are foolish people” so I remain ignorant of why they were protesting. Lots of walking about the smarter parts of the city, coffee, sticky pastries & games of backgammon in the lovely tree shaded Splanzia Sq. and are at a fab Cretan restaurant just out of town – my lamb cooked in wine was just mmmmm. Come the new week and I finally got confirmation and tickets for the Rhodes ferry that will dock at Sitia, a small town at the far eastern end of the island, on Wednesday. That makes it easy now to plan the last few days here on Crete.  Squeezed in visits to the archaeological museum with a Byzantine collection and a great art gallery that had a terrific photo exhibition of three contemporary Greek photographers given a floor each – a solo exhibition each! http://www.pinakothiki-chania.gr/pinakothiki-chania.gr/en/exhibitions/sotiris_felios.html
PS  Hania has a huge array of museums – Archaeological, Byzantine & Post Byzantine Collections, Nautical Museum, Historical Archives, Municipal Art Gallery, Folklore Museum, Arts & Crafts village, School Life Museum, Typography Museum, Chemistry Museum AND the Museum of Contemporary Art. Phew!
NOTE: An announcement yesterday by Greece’s Finance minister that Greece will NOT be making the next loan repayment to the EU, makes talk of a ‘Grexit’ more likely, if only temporary? Only time, EU manoeuvrings & Greek Parliament will tell. 



25 May 2015
RETHYMNO
With a half day left in lovely Hania, I managed to squeeze in a visit to the Museum of Contemporary Art of Crete (MCAC) & what a lovely space hosting an exhibition titled Flying Over the Abyss, with so many pieces and installations challenging and considerate of the theme, from artists all over the world. Loved it! The finally found the Synagogue open where I met a lovely Australian who has been here for 8 years now, married to a Cretan, who was really interesting to talk to. There are only 8 jews left here in Hania now, with this being the only synagogue - a local artist has started an interesting project http://www.konstantin-fischer-hania.com/i-wish-i-knew-more.html  Also squeezed in a quick trip to the other side of the city to find an interesting Church (was a church, was a mosque, now a church) now open & revisit a gallery where I had seen a print of a lovely woodcut in a gallery window. This morning they are open and the unframed print was very affordable so now it will soon be posted home with a few other ‘small ‘purchases. Did I mention the silk weavers from Northern Greece with a small ‘pop up’ shop on the harbour, with lovely scarves?
Only took an hour’s travel to reach Rythymno – another walled Venetian Port on Crete’s North Coast. A park here has a large memorial to Australian soldiers who fought in WW2 alongside the Cretans, who then sheltered and aided their evacuation from the island after Germany invaded and occupied Crete – now I know where Tom Sullivan & Norm Baker were fighting with the partisans (for those of us who watched The Sullivans many years ago)! Sightseeing around the Fortress of Fortezza Rethymno (ho hum, another day, another Venetian fort), but this one was built on top of the ancient Rithimna acropolis, in 1573, with terrific views. Much was destroyed during WW2 but it is a nice wander in the fading afternoon sun with a few restored bits and great views over the old city and harbour. Meeting up with Mal there, he tells me about an installation in the restored Mosque of Sultan Ibrahim Han (built after the Turks captured the city in 1646) from an exhibition being staged at the Contemporary Arts Museum, so I collect the address, open times and a catalogue – yah. There is a busker out front is playing a great classical guitar and the fort shop had the cheapest postcards I’ve seen since Samos, so a big buy up on picture cards today for all my friends. Walking back through the old walled town, I find the Venetian’s popular Rimondi Fountain, Loggia (Meeting house for nobility, now a shop) and the only vestige of the original city wall, the Porta Guora. The Ottoman’s Neratzes Mosque was converted from a Franciscan church & has now been restored and converted into a music conservatory so tourists are allowed in for a quick look see at the domed roof in excellent condition. Back at the fort, I read a poster for an Old City Festival and tonight they are showing the movie, 100 Foot Journey at the Historical & Folk Art Museum, a Venetian mansion. I turned up on time to lots of chairs set up, to find out that a) they showed the movie on Saturday night, b) they have changed the program and it is now a walking tour of the old city in Greek language only & c) they have changed the time & the tour started at 7pm! But it was a nice walk back to scour a 2nd hand shop and find some nice textiles to go home with that woodcut & scarves…..

PS  I read in the Chania Post about an Australian who built & dedicated an Orthodox chapel to the Cretans in 1979, as a token of gratitude to the southern Prevelly Beach monastery who provided shelter and helped him to escape Crete. Named St John the Theologian, at Prevellly Park in WA, Australia, it was described as a little piece of Crete on the Western Australian coast. Who knew?


26 May 2015
SITIA, CRETE
A Region rich in Nature & Culture
Visited the Archaeological Museum housed in a Turkish Era prison, which was well informed with a highlight being a lovely Aphrodite sculpture, 1 B.C. along with the usual Minoan, Geometric, Archaic, Classical, Hellenistic and Roman artefacts!   An express bus to Iraklio allows for a quick stop over that gives me time to post another 3kgs home while wondering if I am doing the right thing in sending off my down coat back home so fingers crossed there will be more good weather in Turkey ;-) Another express bus to Agia Nicholas which seems to be a bit of a tourist haunt, with nice beaches hereabouts, then onto the next bus. But 20 minutes into the 2hr trip to Sitia we stop for some Germans who had got on the wrong bus, to her chorus of shizer, shizer which made me laugh thinking of all the wrong buses I have boarded in my travels. Great countryside again with amazing mountains full of rocks, oleanders (boy, so I have some respect for the tough oleander bush now) and very little development. Arrived in Sitia to find the lovely Hotel Krystal with a lift to the 4th flr – yaah, no stairs to climb to the cheap rooms. This town that must see a lot of tourists at some time going by the number of seaside eating establishments here, but certainly not too many folk about today and very ittle chinese tat for sale. A visit to St Katerinas finds a mass in progress with 2 men taking turns singing the creed and only one other man in the congregation but the decorations and paintings in this church are elaborate & in good condition, a sure sign money is coming into the community. The Kazarma Castle up the hill was built by the Venetians as a garrison and gives great views over the town, but apparently the walls are Roman; see how good I getting with dating my ruins!! Dinner by the seaside with great meze, a few raindrops about but nothing serious, so all looking well for travel tomorrow, all the way to Rhodes – my last Greek island for this trip

PS Sitia was an established Minoan city & port, trading with the Phoenicians & Egyptians since 2500 B.C. It is now Greece’s most southernmost port.