Up and over Crete

We arrived in Heraklion, on Crete’s northern coast, and then drove down a winding road to our hotel. We had, quite smartly, chosen to rent a car. The Island of Crete is extremely rocky, so much so that at first glance it would seem uninhabitable. But this has been Crete’s great advantage throughout the ages, making it hard to invade. For this reason it was home to one of great early civilizations: Minos. Plus, the rocky areas are one of the things that make the island so beautiful. 

Our hotel was on the top of a hill, so the ground was inclined and there were small sets of stairs to get from one part of the hotel to another. A steep path led down to a beach, where we went the next morning. It was cluttered with tourists, including many young children. We relaxed on the beach for a couple of hours, and then went to one of the restaurants that faced the water. After we finished our lunch the waiter gave us four cups of Raki, the Crete alcoholic drink that is stronger than vodka. 

We decided to spend the rest of our day in the Palace of Knossos. In 1900, Sir Arthur John Evans excavated a grand Minoan palace. He was so excited that he proceeded to partially reconstruct the place, expending 32 years and hundreds of thousands of dollars of his own money. This greatly annoyed professional archeologists, but made the palace extremely popular among tourists and other common folks. 

The reconstruction was very cool, but it was difficult to differentiate between the actual palace and the imagination of Mr. Evans. There were some amazing frescos, also mostly reconstructed, dating back to the time when the palace was open and active. 

After we were done with the palace, we rushed off to the archeology museum. We had limited time left in the day, so we had to hurry before it closed, and when we got there we only had an hour. The museum had a breathtaking collection of artifacts from all sides of ancient Minoan life, from trade to frescos, from some of the first writing in the world to jewelry. Many items came from the Palace of Knossos. Some of the stuff was nigh perfectly preserved, like a set of caskets with drawings on them. We had to leave before we could see the entire museum, but we still loved it. We had planned to spend 2 days in southern Crete, and so, the next morning, we packed up and prepared to switch to a hotel named Monucus Monucus (which happens to be the scientific name of the mediterranean monk seal). But before that, we went on a hike in Imbros Gorge, one of many deep canyons that fall into the ocean on the south coast of Crete. We saw wild goats, which is to be expected because Crete is full of goats. However, these goats seemed somehow happier than the domesticated goats we saw later. As we neared the end of the gorge the sun was setting and we were surprised to see a really fit runner going in the other direction. 

After the hike was over, we took a taxi to our car. We were driving down to our apartment when we noticed the runner we had seen earlier going up the hill.  We gave him a lift back to his hotel. He was from Vienna, Austria, but he had been to many places in Europe and some in the U.S, which he told us about. We dropped him off, but before we went to our new apartment we went to the very bottom of the hill to eat dinner. There were tons of restaurants, many with fresh caught fish and seafood. We couldn’t decide what to eat, so we went out to the rocks and thought about what it would be like to kayak in and have dinner there. Then we ate a delicious dinner and went to our apartment for the night. 

Our apartment was near the town of Sfakia, which had a marked history of resistance to the Venetian and Ottoman empires that occupied Crete for most of the Second Millennium. We saw signs of this several times on our journey. On one occasion, Daddy and I stopped to see an ancient fort, while Mommy and Natalia went to an art museum.  The fort, already well defined by Crete’s rocky coast, was still intact, and might still be a good hiding place in case of an alien invasion. It had been taken over by the Ottomans, who had constructed a mosque in its center. The Ottomans tried, and failed, to convert the Greeks to Islam, often violently. 

An exhibit from the art museum had been put in the mosque for no apparent reason. Wondering why, we went to ask the women who oversaw the building and the exhibit. We struck up an extremely interesting conversation with her about Greek politics. She had been a teacher, but because of the economic crisis she was out of work even though she was very well educated. We talked about the cruelty of the creditors, how the Greeks “cooked the books” to get into the European Union (something that everyone knew at the time), and the ongoing negotiations over the Greek debt. In particular, she lauded Yanis Varoufakis, the Greek finance minister. (I will state my opinions on all of these things in the background on Europe section of the blog).

We also visited another fort. Most of it was ruins, but there was a tower that was remarkably intact.  According to historical fact and local legend, the fort had been built by the Venetians to fortify their control of Sfakia. Every day workers would be sent in, and every night the locals tore down what they had built. To stop this, the Venetians hung the Pastos brothers for being responsible. Later,in 1828, a great battle occurred at the castle, with the Ottomans crushing a Greek revolt. Based on another myth, the shadows of those who lost their lives in the battle can be seen marching at dawn.

After looking at the remains of what were once walls, we went into the wooden castle in the back. It had a square hole in the middle  and on the walls were paintings of Sfakian life. We went to the top, which had an amazing view of the nearby beach and the required flag. Back at the bottom, there was a table exhibiting a type of weaving unique to Sfakia.  

One afternoon, we decided to see what it was like to live in Crete. One of the problems we encountered on the trip was that we didn’t get to meet that many local people and see their way of life as much as we would have liked. So we decided to visit one of the local Cretan villages. We drove the incredibly windy and high road up hill to the village. Along the sides there were beautiful flowers. The road was quite narrow, and we could turn around only with great difficulty. The roads in Crete are some of the best roads I’ve ever ridden on, even though we heard that they were built fairly recently, in the past decade or so. For that reason, driving through the towns can be weird, as they weren’t made to have roads in them. On the left side of the road, many houses were built on the side of the cliff. We walked up the right side to explore the village. This side went up the hill, and we saw a pair of goats in a cage, several churches (for one small village), and a school. There were several people, but they only spoke Greek, so we couldn’t communicate with them. Still, it was very nice to see a small Cretan village. We got back in our car and drove up an incredibly steep and winding road to the top of a mountain. We came upon a quaint little cafe in the middle of nowhere. It was decorated with lamb skulls and sold many things like herbs, honey, and raki. We got a lemonade, and talked to some of the people there. At the very top of the hill there was another village, with a shop and some homes. The next day we headed back north over the mountains to Heraklion and on to Athens.

-Isaiah