Back to Chania

We left Aghios Pavlos with every intention of returning sometime; I really hope we manage it. We had a longish drive through the mountains to the other, north side of the island, as we want to see Chania, and that's where we fly home from.

We stopped in Spili, the regional centre, which is a lovely little town, with a delightful square with a very long fountain, a trough with a row of lion heads spouting water, some tempting cafes (but it was too early to eat) and some really appealing tourist shops. There’s quite a lot of stuff you actually would like to buy in Crete. Wihout any intention of actually shopping, I ended up buying a tablecloth and napkins and a couple of bathmats!

The drive was less stressful than we expected, because the traffic was quite light, and the roads, on the whole, wider than we expected. It was certainly a lot less stressful than Norway or round Genoa, the two places which for us define driving stress. The scenery is spectacular – the mountains go as high as 7,000 feet and still have patches of snow on the top, and there are some amazing rock formations. It’s pretty barren – there are some pines and, I think, myrtle, and strips of pink oleander down the mountain sides marking tiny watercourses.  Occasionally, it was barren enough to make me think of Arizona, especially since all the road signs have been shot up. We drove up and up, some of the time beside the Imbros Gorge, down which the Commonwealth troops escaped to the sea in 1941. The Royal Navy managed to get a lot of them off, but about 12, 000 were captured. There’s a museum, really just a collection of all sorts of military equipment from both sides, collected by a Cretan man who was wounded in the fighting as a ten year old. It ranges from an anti-aircraft gun to a box of Mills bombs (which I sincerely hope have been made safe) and a kukri. I didn’t know Gurkha soldiers were involved.

We had a late and solid lunch at a taverna near the end of the Imbros Gorge. It was charmingly decorated, all Cretan blues and white, and run by a couple who weren’t quite old enough to be our parents. It promised home cooking, and I must say, years of experience on the part of our hostess told, and it was a wonderful meal.

We stayed just outside Chania proper, a bit back from the beach but with a sea view, and today we went into Chania, which is a delightful town. It didn’t get so badly bombed as Iraklio, so lots of the old town has survived and is mostly pedestrianized. I imagine it’s a bit grim in high season, but today there were  just enough tourists to give it a nice buzz.

Old shop in Chania

Restored house in the old Turkish quarter

The harbour is really worth seeing, with massive Venetian fortifications and a lighthouse, and enormous stone sheds, for maintaining the galleys. Apparently there were something like seventeen of them but only about eight are left.                                             

Old mosque, with harbour walls on the left

The Lighthouse

There’s also an enormous customs house, and we ate lunch in what had been an olive oil soap factory under the Venetians. Crete does make one muse on the mutability of things; the Minoans, rich, skilled, artistic and sophisticated, and gone like ash in the wind; the Venetians, the great power of the Mediterranean, and now a sinking city existing on tourism.

The galley sheds

There’s an archaeological museum, with some Minoan bits, and the best thing was a whole case of pottery bulls, left as offerings at a shrine to Poseidon, in his capacity as the god who causes earthquakes. There were offerings of real sheep and goats, but presumably a real bull was too expensive, so pottery ones were substituted.  The other good museum was of Byzantine bits, with some frescoes, mosaics and carvings. Crete has an awful lot of history.

Restaurants lining the harbour

There’s a couple of leftover minarets, and a mosque on the harbour, used for exhibitions. The one today was on the Battle of Crete. There were some amazing photographs, but one board really stunned us. It was clearly the prints of a roll of film which some German had taken at the massacre of about 35 Cretan villagers, documenting the whole thing, from rounding up the villagers, separating the men and boys, to good clear pictures of the firing squad, to the corpses. I know that psychopathic serial killers sometimes take photos, but these were ordinary soldiers. I presume they were so sure that they’d win the war that they didn’t consider the possibility of being brought to justice, but how is it that they were so lacking in shame that they would document their actions?

On a similar topic, we found a sixteenth century synagogue, with library and a mikvah. It has recently been restored because it was burned in 2010, by, according to the information, two British, two Americans, and one Cretan. How depressing is that? Especially since the synagogue had a plaque in memory of the Jews of Chania,  who were deported and killed towards the end of June 1944. After D Day, when surely, surely the Germans knew they were going to lose the war.

Church with bell tower and ex-minaret

To return to more cheerful topics – I’ve bought olive oil, herbs, and saffron, and even a bottle of raki. We keep being given a free tot after meals and it’s the nearest thing to lighter fuel I’ve ever tasted. But we had a taste of some with lemon and honey (and it was weaker, thank God) and it was nice. So I’ve also got a small bottle flavoured with pomegranate.

Then we went back to the hotel and I changed to go down to the beach for a swim. It’s quite windy today, so it was mostly jumping the waves and not a lot of actual swimming, but very invigorating.

The journey back was much less stressful than the journey out; and the whole week was a terrific success. Every café had a group of old boys sitting drinking and gossiping, and definitely not helping with the housework, shopping or cooking,  with the result that  Phil wants to retire to Crete.