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.