4 months 3 bags 2 chances: Hania, Crete....Ree's POV

SATURDAY CONTINUED...

Frida Apartments - Million Dollar View
Long Walk into town - Dogs and Cats and Creaky Old Bridge
Lunch/Dinner next to upstrung Octopi
Hania - A town in ruins
Wifi Desperation

SUNDAY...

Morning jog though Venetian splendour
Back to poke about the shops - ever get that "I'm being ripped-off" feeling?
Is it a ferry or a small planet?

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Gotta love the Greeks. They are great copers. With all that has been dished out to their people and their collection of islands in recordable history it takes a certain amount of tenacity to still be the fabulously friendly and happy people they seem to be.

I seem to be on a bit of a history bent here - I find the past of this place absolutely fascinating, maybe because it is so everywhere and so part of who these people are today. Of course the only evidence I have of anything is from two towns in Crete and a fantastic book I started reading documenting Greek history and so I now think I'm a full bottle and am able to bore my children senseless on a whole new subject. Poor loves.

Not including the Minoans - because I'm not sure where they came from (although there is archeological evidence they arrived in Crete by boat 130,000 years ago) Crete has been occupied by one nation or another since 1400 BC when the Myceneans arrived and took over. They were followed by the Dorian Greeks, then the Romans, the Venetians and then the Turks, revolutionary war prevailed late in the 19th C and independence was declared early in the 20th C for a few short years, then some civil war with the Greek mainland after an attempt at unification, but then WWII arrived and the Italians took over again, then the Germans and then another civil war. Finally a republic constitution becomes law in 1974 and then the debt crisis hits in 2009. Its been rough.

No reason why a perfectly good wall shouldn't be able to help out with the washing

And yet everyone smiles and is patient, generous and helpful. They are aware I'm sure that the 16 million tourists that come to Greece each year account for 40% of the nation's livelihood and it's wise to be agreeable, but their culture points to these traits as inherent. There are balconies everywhere - opportunities for waving and greeting. The car horns don't honk constantly despite the crazy traffic. They have improvised and adapted - old convents become hotels and movie theatres, venetian fortresses now host fish restaurants and artists studios, mosques have become museums. Crumbling antiquities have been used to hold up clotheslines and house public gardens. Bits of available space are used in the most remarkable ways. We saw a motorbike exhaust pipe extracting cooking fumes from a kitchen window. They are inventive and colourful and we've been lucky enough to have only positive experiences.

No table available inside madam? Perhaps you'd like to sit al fresco?

Anyway - I digress... our hotel here was a way out of town. A decent 2km walk each way I think, but with ample opportunities for sustenance along the way. Bakeries, cafes, tavernas, gelati stores and Hania itself (they say Hanya) is full to the brim with eateries. We walked along little back streets, past an overgrown canal, across a very decrepid bridge, by an octopi-in-the-sun laden marina, past dozens of under-construction and between-owners hotels and an odd dirty looking beach (beach not a patch on what we are used to but seemed to be something of a drawcard for tourists and locals alike - lots of very pale-skinned, now-burnt europeans trying to get a spring tan happening). Gorgeous blue water though.

Hania - looking at the harbour from the lighthouse

The town's icon is a Venetian built lighthouse - the oldest lighthouse in the Mediterranean apparently - which was partially destroyed (by a "thunderbolt") and rebuilt in the 1800s. It now shines nightly not in a swinging arc but as a uni-directional beacon. It forms part of the extraordinary fortifications created by the venetians to keep out potential attacking forces - obviously not as impenetrable as they would have liked - but remarkably still standing 400 years later for the most part. Double walls 25 feet high around the city with a huge moat in between them. Also a huge metal chain that could be dragged and strung across the entrance to the harbour to stop ships attempting to enter. They built massive storage buildings in the harbour for their trading activities which are also still standing albeit being used for storing tourist trinkets and dodgery eateries now.

Back at our hotel that night Lorry and I found ourselves in virtual wifi candlelight. The signal was so weak that we went and sat at a little table outside in the dark, as close as we could get to the office where the router was and tapped away in the dark until the waitress from the cafe nearby brought us a candle. so cute.

Next day was not busy - a jog, a walk into town for lunch, more poking about, kids did some school stuff and we packed ready for the big overnight trip to Athens and then all the way back to Santorini.

The Athens bound ferry was just amazing. SOOOOO big. SOOOOOO comfortable. SOOOOO not what I remember from backpacking 20 years ago.