Chania - Minoan, Venetian, Turkish and once again Greek

Chania was extremely charming and very relaxing. The days began with fantastic breakfast beside the water.

  

And watching my little mate go about his very busy morning schedule (he was the only local I spotted who had any sort of schedule at all, as far as I could tell).

 

Days would end with dinner at a beautiful restaurant, again by the water, a couple of blocks from our hotel; so good in modern Cretan cuisine in fact that once we had tried one of the chef’s specials we went there every other night to work our way through the rest of his specials and through the by the glass Cretan wines.

 Quite by chance we found some Minoan ruins of about four houses uncovered a few years ago when some civic works were being undertaken. None of the guide books we had, none of the maps, no directional signs, nothing referenced this really interesting and quite well displayed find.

If you didn’t see this Chris, I have lots more detail in other photos but here are a few.

 

 

 

 

 

 And there was the reproduction of a Minoan boat, which a group of enthusiasts associated with the maritime museum  built for the 2004 Olympics, and duly sailed via 8 stops ( and with a Naval or coast guard chaperone boat) to Athens for the opening of the Olympics. It was really interesting to see how they worked out how the boats were built and what they had to do to reproduce the process as nearly as possible. Interestingly also the Maritime museum where the Minoan boat was, was actually one of the Venetian armoury where they used to store and repair their boats. At that time the sheds were on the edge of the water, so they could launch the boats straight down the slope.

 

Of course we walked along the Venetian harbour walls and out to the rather elegant lighthouse.

 

And apart from the Turkish remnants in the people, all too present for Tony’s liking, there were things like this to remind us of the 500 odd years the Turks were around.

 

 

Charming Rethymno

Rethymo is a charming small town of about 40,000 people with plenty of life, while at the same time seeming quiet, sedate and sort of classy. It has the requisite Venetian harbour, a lot of well restored Venetian mansions and lots of small squares with beautiful shady trees, often mulberries and jacarandas. Bougainvillea is in flower at the moment and most of the lanes have the vine climbing over pergolas or wires that people have carefully put from their houses or businesses across the lane/street to create shading. It looks stunning and the growth everywhere shows that growing stuff here is easy.  The town is framed by enormous mountains of great drama.

And of course there are the standard ancient ruins of various kinds.

Bougainvillea at an excellent modern Cretan restaurant we had dinner at

Cretan fold museum with wonderful weaving and embroidery displays - Jude would love it

Making phyllo pastry - the youngest of makers was about 80 - maybe Tony will get to it yet!

Heraklion msueum a winner

Heraklion is one of several Venetian ports in Crete, and the small part of town that is the Venetian port is picturesque enough, but the rest of the city is pretty unattractive. It features many of the characteristics of Greek towns and cities we know a bit too well, namely, badly in need of a good hosing down, higgledy piggledy and broken pavements, graffiti, uncontrolled parking arrangements, half-finished buildings and deserted and unmaintained buildings, cars trying to negotiate medieval laneways and streets. Or in sum, a bit of a shit heap.

I’d probably suggest to others that the only really good reason to go to Heraklion, other than to catch a plane in or out, is for the Archaeological Museum, and if you’ve not seen it before, to go to Knossos. And of course to go to Kazantzakis’ grave, one of the sacred sites of Crete and Greece, and to reflect upon the quote from him that forms the town’s memorial for him “I hope for nothing, I need nothing, I am free.”  Ignore the heart drawn on in chalk - probably done by an enthusiast, but still would be better not there.

 

The Archaeological Museum is an absolute gem. Much extended, renovated and reinterpreted/re-curated since we went there first about 15 years ago, it now gives the best explanation one can get from a museum of the Minoan civilisation. The quality and quantity of material they have is just astonishing. It’s beauty and inventiveness is staggering.

We were so lucky to have time to make three visits, so that we had a running chance of actually absorbing the full extent of the material without getting overloaded or igniting “museum back”. We would go about 10am, stop for coffee in the garden café, then a bit later stop for lunch, and  leave by 2-3pm .

Here are some real highlights, most of which will be familiar.

If you want to dress up a bit, just stick a cat on your head

 

We have never seen Minoan sculpture before - think this might be the only museum that had any in Greece. It certainly wasn't on display 15 years ago.

 



 

Nafpaktos

This is a little port of Venetian times, across the Gulf of Corinth from Patras. We took a local bus over the beautiful bridge that now spans the Gulf from Rio to Antirio, and had a wander and lunch there on a perfect day. The opening of the harbour is only 35 metres across, so only very little boats can use the harbour. The port used to be the base for little boats that would ship people and goods across the Gulf from the mainland to Peloponnesus, until the ferries started in the late 1940s and still operate, even with the bridge open.

Never on Sunday

Well normally it is Never on Sunday (apologies to Melina Mercouri) that we go to church. But in Patras we decided we would, because there was a big festival on at the church of Agius Andreas, (or Ag. Andy as we like to call him)in his honour. Ag Andy was martyred in Patras, after a big day’s fishing. To commemorate this fact, there are bits of the sacred cross on which he was martyred in the church, and there is a finger (don’t know if he had more than 10 but a count of reliquary fingers may indicate that he did)Ag. Andy there were huge numbers of people inside and outside the church, and inside it was sort of moving to see the (blind) faith of the people going to kiss the various relics and icons, and trusting that this was somehow going to fix something. More WTF moments than a radio interview with Tony Abbott this week!

Even an invader needs good port infrastructure

I’ve been reading Mark Mazower’s Inside Hitler’s Greece and he talks about the German invasion having failed via the mountain routes down from the Balkans, and so an alternative route was made through Patras. He evokes brilliantly the tension and expectancy of the waiting, knowing that it will come and that Athens will follow, and then the almost relief when the tanks start to roll and the shells start to fly. At least the waiting is over.

On our first afternoon in Patras, not more than a couple of blocks from our hotel the evidence of the end of that tense waiting was there for us to see.

 

If Patras has a big tourist trade it was not obvious to us. There does appear to be quite a lot of people using it as a jumping off place for the Ionian islands, but mostly Greeks, not foreigners. It was easy to find the simple daily life of the city, at the local square on Saturday night, where children were riding their bikes, young couples were walking their prams and showing off their babies to the admiring oldies, old people were going to church and then on to the bar for a snack and a coffee.

In one of many small quiet squares, we came across a statue of Kostis Palamas, poet and one of the national heroes, whose funeral in 1943 became something of a nationalist touchstone (under the German occupation) when Siklianos, another poet and on his last legs himself, read a poem he had written as the eulogy. The photo I meant include is on my other machine - sorry.

One of the real highlights was the Archaeological Museum, the second new museum, after the Acropolis Museum. It was a great building and an outstanding collection, beautifully curated. Particularly good were the very complete Roman mosaic floors found in a series of villas near one the squares we drank a few coffees in, and the way they were displayed was excellent.

Here are some shots of the museum and some of its contents.

 

The port of Ancona

First impressions were grim – the port seems to have been on a steady decline since its founding by Greeks in 4thC BC. Many things contributed to this first impression – rainy and windy weather, travelling on the train through many tens of kilometres of dismal conurbation of the low cost seaside holiday kind, and then a few kilometres of semi-abandoned industrial plant and a functioning oil refinery before reaching Ancona itself.  Then the bad drag from the station for a kilometre past abandoned and seedy arcaded, filthy buildings with rubbish all around the broken footpaths, then up a huge hill to the hotel. 

Once we’d cooled off and began to contemplate the scene a little more calmly, the magnificent setting, typical of a Greek choice of location, was evident. And as we wandered around the port and the town a little, there was a sort of porty charm. Clearly there has been great mercantile wealth in the place - many very solid and lovely buildings are evidence of that. The Byzantine influence is also evident in some of the buildings. And of course there are small amounts of buildings from Roman times and even a tiny amount of the Greek walls of 4thC BC. But it is also evident that there is now little wealth with which to maintain the buildings in keeping with their original grandeur.

Our conveniently located hotel

Roman port buildings

The setting, as we leave on the ferry

 

The port itself is enormous and quite active. There was a very complicated arrangement for getting a ferry ticket issued, checking in and embarkation, more designed for trucks than foot passengers, and perhaps more logical for that purpose. I liked the security check – quick glance at the passport and a dismissive wave negating any requirement to put the luggage through the scanning equipment – fair enough I guess, as it would have forced the officer to put out a cigarette. But Mutton Dutton, the former PM cum surfie and Border Force would have been appalled.

The ferry has been great fun – huge, fantastically well-equipped and very comfortable and provided us a good night’s sleep. We woke up as we were passing Kerkyra (Corfu) and coming in to Igoumenitsa, where the ferry disgorged about 30 prime movers pulling 40 and 60 foot container loads. Then a little parade of small vans and then the motor bikes, and half a dozen passengers. We went up to the swimming pool and open deck area to watch the unloading and reloading, and found that the kennels on the ferry are on that level. The dog owners had their four-legged friends out of the kennels and were giving them their morning walk on the deck.  We are now running alongside another ferry down the west coast of Greece with land in sight pretty well all the way – mainland on the left and islands on the right – lovely. The sound of komboloia in use accompanies us.

Sitting area in our cabin

Vast lounges,. few passengers

Coming into Igoumenitsa at dawn

Leaving Igoumenitsa

Me and the dogs on the deck - can't see any dogs though

 

Recipe for a good city

220,000 people, buildings of four to six storeys, a mix of architectural styles well-blended, proximity to sea and mountains, and a town council that cares how the place looks. Trieste has all these things. We have no basis for knowing how the weighting applies to each element. Certainly however it is instructive that with, in our terms, a small population, there is plenty of life, a university, a huge hospital, and a good public transport system. Our nearest equivalent might be Wollongong. Trieste wins by quite a few lengths.

Chris asked about good food/restaurants and whether we had found some, her experience being that this was a bit hard to find. We found great delis, and from them ate picnics on our balcony on a couple of nights. There were huge numbers of cafes, but relatively few ristorantes/trattorias. We had two good Italian meals and one shocker Indian, but on the latter, what might we have expected really? We did have to walk about a fair bit to find the two Italian meals, so I guess finding good food wasn’t that easy.

We went to the Revolterra Museum of Modern Art (19^th century to now) and to a couple of other museums of prehistory and local history, and we took the tram/funicular up to the top of the Karst Plateau from where we had magnificent views of Trieste but also across to the Istrian peninsula in one direction and into the mountains of Slovenia in the other. And we poked around the antique shops of what used to be the Jewish ghetto. But the biggest pleasure was just walking about the streets, coming across odd bits of Roman stuff and seeing beautiful palazzo after beautiful palazzo. We covered a lot of the city over the several days and no where did the lovely buildings seem to run out. There were patches that were less grand or well off but on the whole the commercial buildings were fantastic. Here are some examples.

 

 

Beautiful cafes were plentiful too and we did go to a couple of the longer standing grand old ones.

And where there are cafes, there are also women with bored dogs….

 

And silly  and cranky dogs.....