Chania, Crete.
Hey everyone,
Hope you are all well? At the moment we are still in our apartment in Chania that we booked for a month. We have enjoyed our month so far but only have three days to go.
Our first two weeks of sitting on the beach came to an abrupt end, the day after I finally bought a beach mat, when all the beach umbrellas and loungers were taken off the beach and two days later a mini-tropical storm hit. After that the weather has been colder, windy and very changable and the beach covered in seaweed and plastic bottles.
So we found other things to do. We took an hour long bus trip to the next big town Rethymno. We visited its old Venetian fortress on top of the hill in the harbour. The fortress was very Greek in its upkeep and safety - there wasn't any. All the castellation gaps in the top open straight out onto the cliff below, all the paths are built of loose rock, and Ol leaned on the one bit of fencing surrounding a deep drain and almost fell in as it gave way.
We wandered around Rethymno's Old Town, another pretty Venetian area with a million tourist shops, had cheese pies for lunch, and got harrassed to eat and drink at every restaurant.
Another day we took a trip out on the glass-bottom boat in Chania. Our captain, Captain Nick, minus two-fingers, takes groups out to a little island where you jump off with a snorkel and mask and have a swim around. We saw lots of little fish and we got to see a live Octopus, as opposed to the dead ones drying outside restaurants in the sun, and I gave him a stroke - he felt surprisingly silky. I reckon Captain Nick hides him so that he has something to show us tourists and so that fisherman don't come and take him for dinner.
On Tuesday, we decided to take a big three hour bus trip to the capital of Crete, Heraklion. We went to go and see Knossos, the ruins of the Minoan capital. Knossos is famous as the place that inspired the myth of the Minotaur - whereby King Minos angered Posidon by not sacrificing a bull, Posidon made the Queen fall in love with the bull, and 9 months later a baby half-man - half-bull was born. The Minotaur, as the myth knows him, lived in a labyrinth under the King's palace and was fed female virgins to keep him happy.
An archeologist, Arthur Evans, excavated the site in 1900 and decided to recreate parts of it as he wished with concrete rebuilds, painting of frescos and architecture. The result is that the ruins look more interesting than other plain old ruins even if it isn't accurate. Knossos was especially interesting as few other people visited that day and no one blocked your view, or took 10 minutes to take one photo, or shoved you out of the way like everywhere else. Afterwards, we took the three hour bus ride back on the less enjoyable windy, mountainous roads of Crete.
Chania has become a bit boring for us, with the weather turning worse and a lot of the touristy stuff stopping for the winter, but its been nice being bored somewhere different and not having to repack our backpacks every few days. We have also enjoyed having some home-cooked food, particularly the Uncle Ben's curry-in-a-jar we found at the supermarket which Ol has been very happy with.
Luckily, though, Chania has many English-language books floating around and at 9pm every night, except Wednesdays, there is an English-language movie on, otherwise we may have been very bored.
We can even watch English-language news. Crete News and Life has a good news section but the 'Life' section looks like something made in a school journalism class and is shockingly unwatchable. They showed cooking Thai curry with an London-born, pierced and tattooed, 60 year-old ex-gangster who could barely put a sentence together, a thrilling half hour on farm machine fixing, and a crazy cat lady doing a marathon for the cats of Chania. We have been depressed though, since our 1 euro internet place closed down and now we have to go into town and sit amongst all the indoor smokers and nerdy gamers.
However, we will not be bored much longer as this Saturday we have a 10-hour ferry trip to Athens. I am hoping the weather and sea is not as rough as it has been for that. Then one night in Athens before we fly to Austria to hopefully see the snow. Our first stop is Vienna but we will travel round and meet some of Ol's family who live there.
We will miss Chania, our home for a month. We will miss Greek Salads, baklava, seeing the wild cats and kittens in the most unlikely places, the street clocks that never tell the right time, being woken by vans with loud-speakers selling carpets, and temperatures that don't sit below zero but it is exciting to move on again.
Will update again soon from Austria.
From
Sophie and Ollie.
P.s. I have added some photos to the link above if you would like to see them.
