Documentary of an Excursion to Chania

Last weekend we had planned to go camping, but after we realized that it was too hot to sit outside in the shade and eat breakfast, we decided that we probably shouldn't plan to spend the weekend living out doors! So we did not go camping. Instead we relaxed at home, went into Chania on Saturday afternoon (about 7:00 PM is considered afternoon), recovered from going into to town Sunday (stayed home and stayed very still), and spent the day at the beach on Monday attempting to hide in the shade under our beach umbrellas. We learned that our umbrellas don't keep us from getting burned. So we spent the following week recovering from the trip to the beach.

Here are some pictures from our excursion to Chania. They are in order of the trip there, our walk around town and to the Agricultural Fair and then to dinner. Our camera batteries died towards the end, so the last few photos were taken after dark with my cell phone. Not the best photos.

The drive to Chania goes through some farm country, through a a small town called Horafakia, by Kalathas beach, through another larger town called Kounoupidiana, past the University, past the traffic circle that goes to the Eleftheriou Venizelou grave site, through the piney woods on a snaky road, and then down, down, down along the water into Chania.

We parked St. Lucy in the Santa Lucia parking lot (of course). The things that look like giant tooth brushes, or maybe more like toilet bowl brushes, are the lights at the stadium. We went to a store to buy two hanging candle holders similar to ones that were used in the Greek Orthodox Churches. Grier took my picture there. We then started walking across the town from the moat along the wast city wall (where the cars are parked) to the moat along the west city wall where the Agricultural Fair was being held.

On the walk you will see a rather bewildering variety of pictures. But I guarantee you that we could have taken hundreds more pictures that would have been even more bewildering, so this is a very small subset of bewilderment.

The pictures range from the Greek Orthodox church with minarets from the time of the Turkish occupation, old falling down Venetian buildings from the time of the Venetian occupation, what looked like bombed out (WWII) buildings here and there, creative engineering support systems to keep buildings from falling down, the old city walls mounted by modern, rather ugly (in my opinion) buildings that look to be hanging on rather precariously, knives on the street of knife stores, Minoan archeological dig sites, city wall restoration sites. other things that I don't know what they were or where they were for that matter. We got somewhat lost in some rather scary looking, winding, skinny streets with tall wobbly looking stone walls on both side. We did not walk back to St. Lucy after dark on those scary streets. We took a more direct route, not at all scary, just incredibly alive with the cheerful Saturday night party crowd. The party crowd at around midnight, when we were headed back to St. Lucy, still included some lively children. Too hot to be outside in the day time, children must also become nocturnal to enjoy the summer.

The lovely platia with the Plane tree and the two old friends visiting on a summers eve, not at all worried by the colorful graffiti, was charming. Well not the graffiti, that was not charming, but it was an interesting juxtaposition. I enjoyed it, I had to laugh.

In another picture you see more "artistic" graffiti in a colorful alleyway with a familiar pedestrian enjoying the evening.

The rather romantic looking picture of the lady in the flowing skirts under the lovely archway is a little deceiving. When she looked up after the photograph was taken, she could see to rotten timbers holding up whatever was above her head, complete with old carpeting showing through.

The Agricultural Fair was very nice. Honey, baked goods, hand embroidery work, olive oil, Raki, Raki stills, more Raki, many samples of Raki, cheese, juices, fruits, all kinds of canned pastes and sauces and more. Also, we finally saw some Cretan dancing. Very athletic, beautiful and it looked exhausting. But then, we had been walking for about 3 hours by then, it was10:30 at night and we still hadn't eaten dinner. It was likely just our point of view at that point!

So we walked back across the town to the restaurant we had chosen, in an old WWII bombed out mansion, no roof, but roofs are not needed here in the summer (except to keep off the sun). But happily there is no sun at 10:30 at night. The night was young, there were musicians playing (what sounded to us like) traditional Cretan music. Great food and music, more Raki, exhausted. We walked back along the quay wall lined with cafes, nice breeze blowing, nice wave sounds, and our feet were worn out. Thus we took Sunday to recover!