Saturday 26th May 2001.
We awoke late this morning. New visitors has arrived during the night, and there were five children playing around the pool. The proprietress came to chat to us in French again. She seems really happy to use it and is obviously a very knowledgeable lady, telling us much about the sights and their history. She told us today will be a good day to visit the Iraklion museum where all the finds from the different sites are displayed. Obediently, we abandoned the car for the day and walked to the bus stop on the main Iraklion to Agias Nicholaos highway. Eventually a public bus screeched to a halt, the back door opened and a portly Greek conductor shouted “Iraklion! Come inside, sit down, 1,100 drachmas, thank you, mister”, so we got on board and did as we were told. There was welcome air-conditioning and Greek music accompanied us us us us all the way to Iraklion bus station including a diversion to the airport. It was good to be a passenger and enjoy the view as we travelled the edge of the bay with the Island of Dia offshore and the bare hills on the landward side. The journey took about thirty minutes, excellent value at about £1 each. We passed through endless resorts and apartment blocks, mostly unfinished. Even those that appeared complete had rusty steel rods sticking out of the flat roofs in the hope of extending upwards when finance allowed. The ground was dry and parched, grass and leaves yellow and withered, with the skeletal shells of abandoned buildings and accumulated builders’ rubble everywhere. The land is unforgiving; where in England spoil heaps would eventually be overgrown by vegetation, here they remain stark lumps and boils on the landscape for ever. It really is unbelievably ugly and sad to see it so scarred. Crete strikes me as naturally beautiful in its landscape overall, but bare and ugly in its minutiae, even apart from the damage modern developers have created. We are on a Greek island, but there are far more signs saying Mackinson’s Furs and Fashions, Silber Schmuck, Kaffee mit Kuchen etc than are signs in Greek. All the road signs are fortunately in Greek and Roman characters except on the more minor roads. We can work out the main places now, more or less.
So we alighted at the bus station near the port where the inter-island ferries dock, just as a car ferry was loading. Ian bought a return bus tickets from the kiosk to save time if it was busy when we wanted to return, and we wandered along the harbour front where the Saturday market was in full swing. This was a revelation, as much as anything to to observe the character on the faces of the men and women selling their produce. Everyone was happy, calling to each other, even shouting for the sheer pleasure of making loads of noise, only to be outdone by a neighbouring stallholder. Shades were everywhere to protect from the sweltering sunshine. It was mainly fruit and vegetables that were on sale, huge tomatoes, peppers, cabbages, mountains of dark glossy aubergines and pale round cucumbers. There were stalls of bananas and oranges, everything sold by the kilo in big plastic bags. People had trolleys laden with potatoes, oranges and tomatoes. They must have huge families, unless they are destined to hotels or restaurants. Other stalls sold cheeses and fresh fish. Little cafes serving spit-roasted kebabs, known as souvlaki, were frequented as much by the stall holders as the market customers. Given the heat and the lack of ice in use, I would not have trusted either the fresh sardines or the kebabs. It was an interesting and enjoyable experience, though Greee has a lot to learn about the art of presentation, both in its markets and in its shops. Those in the villages just serve straight from the delivery boxes without bothering to display properly at all. It has character, but makes finding what you want, when you don't know how to ask, rather a matter of luck.
Finally we went to the museum. It was wonderful and we were we were there several hours. It proved very fortunate that we had already visited a couple of the sites, so seeing the artefacts and frecoes placed them in their setting. I particularly liked the early pre-palatial pottery from around 2000 BCE. It was perfectly formed, with wonderful covers and simple attractive shapes. Some pots were fired, others turned in a variety of local clays. There was nothing chunky or crude about them; they were delicate pieces of crockery, pretty shaped cups, long spouted jugs and elegant vases. Further on there were amphorae, storage jars the height of a man. There was gold jewellery, ceremonial double-headed axes from around 1700 to 1400 BCE, seals, figurines of bulls, pigs, humans. There were clay tablets incised with texts in linear A and linear B, ritual drinking vessels, clay models of houses, bronze and copper tools and weapons, and even ceramic coffins. Upstairs were restored frescoes from Knossos. Given the fragments they had from which to recreate the originals, a great deal of imagination was needed, and I doubt whether the original was really much like the reconstruction. Indeed we saw one fresco where it was later decided it had been wrongly interpreted. Next to it was the reinterpretation and they were two totally different pictures! We saw the little bee pendant in gold found at the palace of Malia, which is exquisite. There was also a lovely leopard axe-head from Malia, and the bull’s head from Knossos. It was exciting to see in reality something that had become so familiar from history and guide books. Of course, the bull appears everywhere, depicted in clay, as statuettes, decoration on vases, painted or incised, in frescoes, as oil lamps, votive jars, or just as life size model heads.
Eventually feel sated, so we left and made our way to the El Greco park for a rest, before venturing on to the streets. In Iraklion there are thousands of little scooters tearing around the back streets with usually a couple of people on. We even saw some bikes with father, mother and child propped in front. Almost never did anyone wear a crash helmet. It seems so very dangerous that I'm astonished that it's legal. So many visitors hire them and pop about the various towns. I wonder if their insurance covers any accident resulting from not wearing a crash hat. After further pottering around the streets, we bought vegetables and olives at a supermarket and made our way back to the bus station. There the conductor on our bus made it clear that we should have returned on a bus at 12:50 when Ian bought the tickets. How do we explain? Eventually he shrugged and signalled to us to get on board. He was actually very kind, and looked after all his passengers very well on the overcrowded bus, a mixture of Greek, English, German, Dutch and French passengers.
Once back at our apartment, as it was only 7 p.m. we decided to explore the road down to the sea near where we caught the Iraklion bus. This led down to the old village of Anassaris. Actually they didn't seem to be anything particularly old about it, just developing apartment blocks and the couple of tavernas plus one huge, very nice looking block of apartments, complete and covered in beautiful purple shrubs. The beach is nothing special, coarse white sand, rocks that look like builders’ rubble and the little road alongside lined with clothes and souvenir shops with all the signs in Dutch and German.
I'm afraid that having spent my early childhood just after the war in a prefabricated home surrounded by cleared bomb sites and rubble, where weeds overgrow the earth and skeletal shells of bombed buildings remained to be dismantled, Crete, with its half-built shells, patches of dried up weeds, rusty wire fencing, builders rubble’ and spoil tips, looks very similar. I cannot be blind to it, and I cannot find the countryside beautiful; still not one drop of flowing water have we seen. Everywhere is so arid and lifeless, and its popularity as a tourist resort has added enormously to its ugliness. Amidst it all though the people seem delightful and very friendly. It makes me ashamed to think that here, if people work hard and master several languages, they become sufficiently qualified to get jobs as waitresses, shop assistants or car hire agents if they're lucky.
We decided to have supper in one of the tavernas in the village, sitting outside near the sea in the dark and surrounded by flowering geraniums. It was a lovely setting with Greek music playing, and the delightful waiter who patiently allowed us to order two souvlakis and two beers in Greek. We were delighted when he not only understood, but corrected our Greek to make our single beer into the plural. The meal was delightful, and it was lovely watching other diners enjoying their evening too. Our bill was about £9 for the two of us. As we went to leave we were ordered to sit down and wait. A few moments later we were given a glass of ouzo each - compliments of the house. Actually, to my surprise, I thought it rather nice though Ian finished it for me. It is flavoured with aniseed and is an excellent digestive. We then walked the mile back to our apartment in the dark, the end of a very pleasant day.
Sunday 27th May 2001
Today started and ended rather cooler than normal, which was a relief. This afternoon the sky actually turned grey and we experienced a few timid spots of rain. That's probably it for the summer now, and really we almost didn't notice it. We decided to explore the area around Elounda and then visit Agio Nikolaos. The fast road took us through Hersonissos and Malia. We then decided to take a close-up look at Neopoli, which we had passed through on our first day here. It turned out to be very pleasant, and quite and commercialised. Being set back from the coast, it is generally ignored by summer visitors. We parked beneath the shady tree in the main area near a park where are lots of local children played on the climbing frames while their parents at on on park benches watching them, or took a Sunday morning drink on the terrace of one of the nearby bars. There was actually a pond full of lovely goldfish. The children were delighted with it, and kept dropping bits of gravel from the park into it. It's about the only water we have seen anywhere in Crete, but holds exactly the same attraction for kids as anywhere else in the world. Almost immediately an elderly man shouted to us: “Good afternoon! English? German? Good sleep? Happy? Good holidays? Nice country? I wish you nice day! Auf Wiedersehen!”. He was lovely, and it made us feel so welcome.
We explored the backstreets of the little town. Men sat on chairs in the street, backs against the wall, chatting, or sat beneath a tree on the corner of a road playing backgammon while others watched. It seems to be the national obsession here. Again, tiny cats eyed us with suspicion and large dogs snoozed on the pavements.
We discovered a rather smart looking baker’s with the door open, so went in. A lad of around eleven or twelve popped up from behind the counter and modestly said he understood a little English. He proceeded to explain which of the cakes in the shop he liked best, and ended up selling us an assortment of little cakes and biscuits, which was sold by weight. He also he also sold us some black bread - we tried to say brown but he insisted it was black, which it wasn't. He also very honestly explained in delightful English that as it was Sunday it was only yesterday's bread. We bought it anyway and it was fine. We returned to the park to try his biscuit selections. We have decided that Greek pastries and dainties are not really very special, and actually it is the same mixture made up in different forms. We loved our chat with the delightful lad though, and I think he was rather pleased with himself for serving us so well.
We visited the town church. No matter how poor any town or village may be ,its church is always perfect. No half finished building work, and so much money lavished upon it. Not that Neapoli strikes one as poor. It is a comfortable little town with plenty of greenery, and the buildings are in a good state of repair with no speculative building as elsewhere. The church is perhaps a century old, typically Greek with walls of dark greenish blue inside, decorated with frescoes of the Greek saints and a huge chandelier like a wheel in the horizontal position dominating the centre of the church. The little windows set into the plaster are of coloured glass, allowing little pools of bright colour to form on the tiled floor. These windows tend to be diamond, club or lozenge shaped. Next to the church is a much smaller chapel older, and with some lovely old icons painted on wood. On the walls are crude signs of Christianity, the Greek letters x (chi) and p (Rho) superimposed, the first two letters of Christos, but almost like graffiti.
We wished we'd been able to stay in Neapoli. With its several restaurants and shady terraces it would have been a delightful place to be based if we had been free to make our own arrangements as in Corsica. All around the true Cretan countryside could be seen. Gone was the tat of modern tourism; it was just a local town, set against the backdrop of the hills rolling upward into the cloud cover. From Neapoli we struck north up the winding, deserted road through the mountains passing through almost deserted villages such as Kourounes, Finokalia, Skinias and Vrouhas. Most villages have their church, indeed some have more than one. So, although the village may seem deserted and in ruins, the churches were immaculate.
The countryside was still arid, but the valleys were filled with olive trees and the overall impression was one of dark green vegetation and grey scree. The clouds hung low at times, adding a mystical quality to the deserted landscape. Even the villages seemed deserted, the stone walls of the ruined houses blending easily back into the natural landscape of tumbled boulders. The narrow road twisted through the villages with here and there a tub of geraniums or a flowering creeper covering a house front the only evidence that the village was inhabited. Then, on the outskirts, we would see the necropolis, usually a tiny chapel surrounded by flowering shrubs and tombstones, with photographs of the departed sitting along with bunches of plastic flowers on each tombstone. The mountain-sides are bare rock, so burials all have to be above ground.
Frequently along ridges we would see the remains of a row of windmills. We have the feeling that they have all fallen into this used within the past thirty years or so. Whether they were used for pumping water or grinding corn I don't know.
At last we saw the sea at the north coast, and began our endless descent down to the Bay of Mirabella. The sea was an astonishing bright blue with fishing boats and larger ferry boats shining in the hot sunshine as they cut across the bay. Immediately offshore is the island of Spinalonga which was once used as a leper colony and continued in use as such long after after the development of modern drugs to treat the disease rendered such isolation unnecessary. Today it looks beautiful in the blue sea with the much bigger island lying beyond to its south. The latter is linked to the mainland by a small isthmus of land where we later discovered a beautiful dolphin mosaic from a very early Byzantine basilica. Stopping to look down on the beautiful blue sea and the hillside below us, we also looked up at the towering heights above, a bare yellow rock face pockmarked by many cave entrances. Eventually we reached sea-level and followed the line of the bay around Elounda, passing the pleasant little village of Plaka, just opposite the former leper colony, where the water lapped right up to the road.
At Elounda we parked and walked around the large main square, lined with restaurants, souvenir shops and shops selling sponges gathered from the Mediterranean seabed.These were expensive and I'm not sure if it's all ethical because of over-exploitation. Anyway we decided against buying one, which I don't think endeared us to the lady selling them. Along the water's edge restaurants vied for custom. We selected a really nice place, shady and built out over the water. We decided on swordfish with rice and vegetables and while waiting looked down into the crystal clear water at fishes swimming in profusion just offshore. Several little cats also sat watching the fish, just too far out of their reach. A couple of ducks pottered around - strange on salt water. The beaches were small and not really very nice, with lots of detritus, either sea weed or drinks bottles. However the water is warm and clear, with little sponges, seaweeds and tiny fish right up to the shoreline. The meal was lovely, and afterwards we explored the town which, despite being immensely popular with British tourists, remains remarkably pleasant, though I doubt it is still recognisable as the little fishing village of its former life. We watched the little white ferry boats loading and discharging their modern-day human cargoes, plying back and forth to the former leper colony just offshore.
Eventually the heat became unbearable so we drove around to Agios Nikolaos where the sky had clouded over and threatened to rain, but it failed to deliver except for a couple of spots. We were pleased to find how pleasant Agios Nikolaos is. It is constructed around a harbour formed from a former bottomless pool, thought to be 60 meters deep, which has now been linked to the open sea. We wandered around the harbour, where local children mixed happily alongside those of holidaymakers from around Europe. They seemed keen to test their English, with one little girl coming up to us and saying “hello” very boldly before turning shy. It looks a pleasant place for a relaxing holiday, with seaside walks, a network of little tourist shops, and an endless choice of waterside restaurants.
Around 7 p.m. we decided to head back to Anisaros, and within 30 minutes on the fast new road we were home - it took hours getting there over the mountains on roads just one step up from dirt tracks. Back here it has been scorchingly hot and sunny all day. I jumped in the pool and did 25 lengths while Ian organised supper and a bottle of Cretan wine - how civilised!
Monday 28 May 2021.
Today has been our last day at this end of the island, and we got back so late tonight that I've had to forego my evening swim and also find out where the headlights are on the car. It is about 9.30 p.m. and I'm on our patio for the last time, drinking some very nice Cretan wine and nibbling black bread and taramasalata while waiting for Ian who is showering off the accumulated sweat and grime from driving across Crete on partially constructed roads accompanied by clouds of white dust. Around me large beetles are dive-bombing, attracted by our patio light. Each morning we find the bodies of several where they have crashed and fallen on their backs, kicked and struggled to turn over, and finally died. By 10 a.m., unless I've moved them all to the geranium beds, they are surrounded by hundreds of ants busily dissecting them. A hard green apricot has just fallen from the tree and hit Ian, now out of the shower, on the head, probably dislodged by another kamikazi beetle. Today we decided to visit the sites of Gortys and Festos. The journey was a long one and took most of the day. It was fresh up in the Diktian mountains, but lower down it was stifling. We took the scenic route through Kastelion, and along quiet, reasonable roads through a landscape of beautifully planted and tended vines with the mountains rising impressively behind. A couple of months earlier no doubt they would have been green almost to their summits, but now they were yellowing and parched. The olives and vines however were well cared for and looked green and healthy. Certainly we were very impressed with the landscape, but particularly with the way the Cretan people have adapted to and learn to live in harmony with the landscape. We feel today we we seen the real Crete, real people, real villages, real landscapes. Having passed through the little town of the ten Cretan saints, Agii Deka, martyred for their faith in the third century, we stopped at Gortys. It was unbelievably hot in the valley, and every move was an effort. We visited the early Christian basilica with rather nice reproduction icons, then struggling across an exposed area to the odeon or theatre section. Behind and protected was the Gortys law code dating to the 6th century BCE. This laid down the laws of the city state, with punishments for various offences, and was written in boustrophedon, zigzag writing alternating backwards and forwards line by line.
The rest of the town and later Roman developments lay on the far side of the main road spread out within the olive groves. It really was punishingly hot, so we gave them a miss and drove about a mile up and through a village to the open hills overlooking the site.
Then on to Phaistos with Mount Ida, the home of Zeus, towering above it, its crevices still packed with snow. It hardly seems believable with temperatures so high; we almost felt we could stand and watch as it melted. There is a very strong wind on the south side of the island that was most welcome but rather to powerful swirling up dust into unpleasant little whirlwinds that stung the eyes and filled the nostrils.
The person at the entrance switched from French to English as he turned from the people in front of us to sell us our tickets. We asked how many different languages he spoke, to which he replied modestly and with a nice smile, “I speak very good Greek”. We sat in the cool shade of the restaurant balcony drinking iced water looking up at Mount Ida before braving the heat of mid afternoon to wander around the Minoan site of Phaistos. It is beautifully set, with the Libyan sea in one direction and Mount Ida in the other. The remains are substantial and the finds, in the Iraklion museum, are significant; it must indeed have been an impressive site originally. Parts were from the early Palatial period, the majority later. There are three courtyards and some later Hellenic areas. There seemed to be several flights of steps and even some complete chambers with modern concrete roofs, filled with huge storage vessels, so it was easier to imagine what it was originally like.
Back at the car around 5.30 p.m., we decided we drive the 16 km to Agia Galini on the south coast to see where our German friends Hubert and Sigrid spent last week. It turned out to be a very pleasant little town nestling in a little fold in the cliffs, one of the very few places on the south coast where it is possible to reach the sea. It is built steeply up the cliffs from the sea, with endless flights of steps linking the little streets. Everywhere there are terraces with bamboo awnings to protect from the heat. All are full of tables ready to serve supper to the visitors. At night it would seem the entire town becomes one huge open-air restaurant! It is a pretty place, all the houses white-washed, with flowering shrubs covering the facades of the buildings. At the foot of the town is the marina, and from the end of the jetty wall an excellent view can be had back to the little town. There are pleasant beaches, clear water and, according to the guide books, nice clifftop walks to other bays. We can appreciate why Hubert and Sigrid love it and return every year. There is enough to do without getting bored, but it is also very relaxing. We bought ice cream on the little beach by the harbour and sat watching children play at the water’s edge. Maybe this time last week Hubert was doing the same; with his enthusiasm for “leck Eis”, it wouldn't be surprising.
We realised the time was pressing and we had best be heading back. We decided to return across the mountains as it shows more of the countryside than taking the main routes up through Iraklion. It did however take considerably longer and we didn't get back until after dark.
We have now just returned from chatting with the hotel lady in French and with her son Manos in English. They really are delightful, friendly people. We had a very nice filtered coffee with them which she made using decaffeinated coffee as she reckoned it wouldn't prevent us from sleeping. We were told that the King of Saudi Arabia and his twelve wives had visited Elounda on Saturday where he' had spent a couple of million pounds (a billion drachmas). Apparently he bought all his wives jewellery and himself a cup of tea. I suspect he must have bought a few more things which haven't been mentioned. His sister will be spending her honeymoon there soon and I gather he was testing the place out. Manos and family are wondering if they could persuade him to stay here instead!
People here really are friendly. As they passed us, one car hooted and everyone waved as they all shouted “Hello to you”. We stopped for petrol and were served by a little lad of about six who had to reach up to get the pump. He strode up and asked quite clearly in English “Key, please. Lead free? Full?”. He was so cute. When it came to pay saying he took the money and then yelled for Dad to check it out. Such confidence.
