As if we made a deal with Zeus, our very hot August weather
took a turn for the better just a few days before our scheduled departure on
Friday, September 1.
Winds from the
north brought cooler temperatures but still no rain.
I took off from work at noon and we took a
taxi to the
port
of Piraeus to catch our
Hellenic Seaways ferry called “Highspeed 4”.
Poseidon gave us a tail wind and safe seas so that we reached our
destination,
Souda Bay, on the
island of Crete,
on time at 9:00 pm.
Another taxi ride
took us the short distance to the pretty town of
Hania, which is sometimes spelled Chania,
Kania, or even Xania.
Hania was the
location of ancient Kydonia, a Minoan settlement in the pre-Greek period.
Since then this town has been fought over and
controlled by Romans, Byzantines, Venetians, Genoese, Turks and Egyptians.
In 1941 Hania was the site of another
invasion during World War II when the Germans bombed the city and the Battle of
Crete began.
Our hotel was located in the Old Town of Hania, in the
Merchants’ District, identified by scenic little streets and alleys with old
Venetian houses, iron balconies, and stone doorways sometimes ornamented with
sculpted coats of arms.
We stayed at the
studios of Ifigenia, a conglomeration of hotels and rooms scattered around the
Merchants’ District.
Our room was in the
Hotel Captain Vassilis with a small balcony directly overlooking the harbor
where dozens of restaurants and cafes are located.
This was good and bad – it was good because
it was a beautiful, scenic location.
Bad
because the Greeks start dinner at 10:00 pm and party until the wee hours of
the morning.
But we did have air
conditioning so we could (and did) close our windows to shut out the noise.
However, we did have to get used to going to
sleep with a bass beat from the music below.
Saturday we spent the day exploring the pretty town of
Hania.
We started with breakfast at an outdoor café
with a begging cat who swiped some of Rita’s omelet.
We walked along the harbor to see the Mosque
of the Janissaries, which dates back to 1645 and is the oldest Ottoman building
on the
island of Crete.
It is not a mosque today but houses exhibitions.
Near this mosque were several horse-drawn
carriages and I took photos of several of the horses sporting straw hats.
We continued along the harbor past 16
th
century Venetian arsenals where ships were once stored and repaired.
We tried to walk out along the sea wall to
the Venetian lighthouse but the path was blocked.
We saw a replica of a Minoan ship in the
harbor here then set out down one of the major streets called Halidon.
We saw the 19
th century Agia
Triada cathedral and several leather markets on the way to the
turn-of-the-century covered market which had a wide variety of local fruit,
vegetables, fish, and meat.
After an iced coffee at an outdoor café, we walked to the
public bus station where we purchased our next day’s early morning bus tickets
to the Samaria Gorge.
Then we walked to
the Splantzia Quarter and the 1821 Square which commemorates a rebellion
against the occupying Turks, during which an Orthodox bishop was hanged on the
spot.
On this square is the Agios
Nikolaos (or Saint Nicholas) church which the Turks turned into a mosque.
When the Greeks won their independence they
turned it back into a church but did not tear down the pretty minaret which the
Turks installed.
So it is a church with
a bell tower and a minaret.
It was a
quick walk to the Kasteli district, the oldest inhabited area, where we could
look into archeological dig sites of ancient Kydonia.
Excavations show that this site was inhabited
since 2000 BC by Minoans and Myceneans.
It was time for lunch and we chose a shaded courtyard in the
Mesostrato restaurant in
Old
Town.
This restaurant is located in the ruins of a
building that at one time was the Venetian officer’s quarters.
We started off with cold Alpha beers then a
Greek salad, Cretan cheese pies and a dish called sidramis, a spicy pork.
After lunch we barely made it to the local
Archaeological Museum,
housed in the Venetian
church
of San Francesco, before
it closed.
The museum has a nice
collection of statues, jewelry, pottery, mosaic floors, and coins that were
located in the near vicinity.
In the
former church courtyard was an ornate octagonal Turkish fountain which the
Ottomans installed.
We had a quick ice
cream cone before returning to our hotel where we sat on our balcony and read
our books during the heat of the day.
In the evening we walked some more around the harbor area
and then to a secluded restaurant off the beaten track but mentioned in several
websites and guide books.
The restaurant
was called The Well of the Turk and was located in a narrow alleyway where the
former house had a well inside the building during Ottoman occupation.
As much as current Greeks hate the Turks, it
has to be admitted that the Ottomans restored fresh water and baths that were
forgotten since Roman times.
Maybe the
Dark Ages should be called the Stinky Ages.
This restaurant was run by a young lady who had lived in
Morocco for a
while and the menu had North African and Middle Eastern influences.
We were not exceedingly hungry and split a
mezza plate for two which had a large variety of starters.
After that we split a large serving of vegetarian
couscous and ended with a pot of Moroccan mint tea.
The food and wine was excellent and the
setting was quiet and cozy.
We had a
long day ahead of us so we turned in fairly early.
Sunday we set our alarm clock for 5:00 am to get to the bus
station for our 6:15 am bus.
The bus
left on time and was not as crowded as I expected.
It took switchback roads to the
village of
Omalos
in the White Mountains and then the short distance to the
Samaria Gorge
National Park
entrance.
We were one of the first buses
to arrive and after eating our breakfast snacks we were on the trail about 7:45
am.
The trail head is at about 3500 feet
and we were cool as the temperature was 55 degrees.
If you Google the
Samaria Gorge you will find several websites
with more information on this hike than I will provide here.
This hike is a popular one with tourists and
one of the highlights of
Crete.
The hike is about 11 miles long and descends
to a river bed that ends up at the
village
of
Agia Roumeli on the
Libyan Sea.
I read up a lot on this hike before we
attempted it but re-reading the articles now I see the use of “tortuous” or
“strenuous” more than I remembered.
It
was more difficult than either of us realized but well worth the sore feet and
legs that we had for days afterwards.
Also, afterwards I discovered that in 1993 a number of walkers were
killed and washed out to sea when a thunderstorm brought flash floods.
Even this year I learned that a 14 year old
boy was seriously injured by falling rocks in July and a French hiker was
killed in May by falling rocks at the same area.
Maybe it’s a good thing I didn’t know that
beforehand.
We did see several warning
signs of falling rocks and new mesh fencing was being installed above the
trails at the most dangerous places.
The hike was beautiful, especially at the beginning when we
walked through heavy pine forests (Calabrian pines) and then through large
cypress tree forests.
The smells were
nice and the views impressive.
The
ravine trail sometimes goes between narrow, sheer rock walls that rise to over
6500 feet.
About half way we made our
first stop at the deserted
village
of Samaria which was
named after a nearby church, Osia Maria, dedicated to the Blessed Mary of
Egypt.
The village was abandoned in the
1960s when the national park was created.
At the village we were able to see and photograph the rare wild goat
called the kri-kri while we ate some of our snacks.
The kri-kri come and beg for food from the
hikers and seem quite tame.
We continued
on, up and down rock paths, sometime hiking in loose white rocks along the
creek bed which was difficult to maneuver.
We crossed rock slides and finally near the end came to the misnamed
Iron Gates or Sideroportes, where the ravine is its narrowest at nine feet
across.
Soon we made it to the end of
the park but were dismayed to discover we still had another mile and a half to
the
village of Agia Roumeli.
This part of the hike was out in the open,
hot sun with no shade or wind.
Rita was
a real trooper and I only occasionally had to remind her of the cold beer
waiting for us to get her to continue on.
We completed our hike in about five hours, a very good time for two old
timers in their 60s.
We were tired, hot, and sore by the time we made it to a
taverna in Agia Roumeli but the beer tasted good.
Unfortunately, the food was not very good
except for the local Sfakios cheese pie with honey which I liked very
much.
This village is very remote with
no roads in or out as shown on maps.
We
sat at our table for most of the afternoon and caught our ferry boat at 3:45
pm.
The ferry made a quick stop in the
small resort of Loutro and then on to the
village of Sfakia
where the remains of a Venetian fort overlook the harbor.
The guide books like to point out the
individualism of the Skafiot clansmen, one mentioning “their reputation for
rugged self-sufficiency and individualism, albeit accompanied by the notorious
feuding”.
Another book calls them “a
belligerent and unyielding people, with fair hair and blue eyes, who…were at
the root of most of the uprisings against the Venetians and Turks.
They used to trade cedar from the mountains
to
Egypt
for coffins and ships.
In 1770 a Sfakiot
called Daskaloyannis (teacher John) led a revolution against the Turks, but he
was defeated and flayed alive in Heriklion.
Thankfully we had no problems with them as we only were here to catch
our bus back to Hania.
The bus drive was
exciting on hairpin turns over the White Mountains once more and with views
looking down into the Imitos Gorge, another ravine to hike in
Crete.
We arrived back in Hania about 7:30 and were smelly, tired,
and hungry.
Pasta sounded good to me and
we saw a nice looking Italian restaurant the day before but would they let us
in with our hiking boots and sweaty clothes?
As Rita commented, “once I take my boots off I’m not putting on any more
shoes”.
We stopped at
Veneto restaurant and luckily there weren’t
very many tourists eating this Sunday afternoon.
We talked to the owner and apologized for our
state but he agreed that this is a tourist town and dress codes don’t work well
even for nice restaurants like his.
He
let us in and we had an excellent meal which we downed in no time flat.
We made it back to our room, took our boots
off, showered and rested on our balcony in a state of bliss (or shock).
Monday was Labor Day and we felt as if we had labored long
and hard when we woke.
We were sore but
still mobile.
Originally we thought we
might tour the nearby town of
Rethymno,
another scenic Venetian town, but the thought of hiking around another town did
not appeal to us.
We ate a nice
breakfast at an outdoor bakery/café then walked the short distance to the
well-organized
Naval
Museum in the restored
Venetian Fort Firkas.
We went back to
our hotel where we had to check out but they let us keep our luggage there
while we went to their rooftop patio overlooking the harbor.
Here we sat and worked the Sunday Herald
Tribune crossword puzzle then read our books until we became hungry for lunch.
We walked to a restaurant called Tammam which
was set in an old Turkish hamman or bath.
There were tables outside but all were full and we found a table inside
in what was once the cold plunge pool.
We had an excellent meal – I had a starter of chicken pancakes which
were more like spring rolls filled with creamy chicken and sauce.
Rita started with grilled feta cheese topped
with tomatoes and peppers.
Rita’s main
course was a Cretan dish of zucchini and potatoes in phyllo dough with a hint
of mint.
It tasted very good but I
really liked my meat pie, a combination of veal and pork in an upside down pie
crust.
We relaxed the rest of the afternoon, sitting on a bench by
the water overlooking the harbor.
We
read our books and occasionally took another walk around some back alleys we
hadn’t walked before.
We did find an old
Jewish synagogue which surprised us and some napping kittens that made a great
photo.
Eventually it was time to get a
taxi and go to
Souda Bay to catch our ferry back to
Athens.
Our ferry left on time at 9:15 pm getting us to
Piraeus at 2:00 am Tuesday morning.
By the time we arrived home and went to bed
it was 3:30 am so I slept in and took the morning off from work.
It took a few days for our leg muscles to
heal totally but we were happy that we completed this hike and saw some more of
the remote, but beautiful, parts of
Greece again.
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