“Traveling off the main road wastes a lot of time. But one discovers many wonderful things.”
― Marty Rubin
“Toula, they two kinds of people: Greeks, and everybody else who wish they was Greek.”
-Gus, My Big Fat Greek Wedding
” Yes, inside the lump… was my twin!”
-Aunt Voula, My Big Fat Greek Wedding
“When I was growing up, I knew I was different. The other girls were blonde and delicate. And I was a swarthy six-year-old with sideburns.”
-Toula, My Big Fat Greek Wedding
“In Greek school, where I learned valuable lessons such as: ‘If Nick has one goat and Maria has nine, how soon will they marry?’”
-Toula, My Big Fat Greek Wedding
Toula: [narrating] A couple more years went by, and Dad brought his mother over from Greece to live with us. Because we weren’t weird enough.
-My Big Fat Greek Wedding
Yiayia: [spoken in Greek] Listen up, ugly Turk. You’re not kidnapping me!
[Gus laughs and tries to hug her, but Yiayia suddenly hits him and runs out the door. Maria and Gus chase after her.]
Gus: Mama, please! The Greeks and the Turks friends now!
Toula: [narrating] We told my grandma the war was over, but she still slept with a knife under her pillow.
Go-Date: Day 45 thru 47, Friday – Sunday. March 8 – 10.
Lesson Learned: Don’t book lodging for more than one week at a time. We lucked out in Nafplion by booking for 3 weeks, but honestly there is a lot to see and do in the Peloponnese. There’s a lot to see in western Crete, but the time of year, the winter of rains with the associated road washouts, bad weather our first week in Chania, and bad, narrow roads made it where we really are running out of things we want to do. If we weren’t committed, we’d move down the road to the east coast of the island. As it is, we’ve shortened our stay in Heraklion and will fly out to Athens on the 19th and on to Cairo on the 20th.
Lesson Learned 2: Begin touring Greece on March 1. We came to Greece on January 24th. We’ve had great weather, and crummy days as well. When a cold snap hit, it lasted about a week. February 1 can be considered early spring, and you get the same kind of weather, including late snows, rain, cold, windy gray days as you might back home (in March). On top of that, a lot of shops (and I dare say entire islands are closed). The ferry schedule is limited and exhibits close early or may be closed for the entire month of February. We’ve found that starting on March 1, most of the shops and cafés are open, the weather nicer, and the crowds haven’t yet arrived. On top of that, you can experience Festival which is sort of Mardi Gras with more stuff for the kids to do. We have totally enjoyed our visit, but it would have been the same with better weather if we’d started a bit later. Of course, we also dodged some nasty weather back home, so I sure don’t regret that.
Festival
Before I forget, I’ll just mention that its Festival here. It’s sort of like the lead up to Lent, but different customs, and a different calendar than the Roman Catholics. It’s a lot of fun, good food, and people wearing costumes like it’s Halloween. The only peculiar thing is all these creepy statues all over the island. I wish I’d have started taking pictures of all of them, but I’m usually driving and they pop up in the weirdest places. Things like, a woman that looks like Michael Jackson, a 6’ tall banana, bunny rabbits, pigs, men in wheel chairs, and many more. It’s really creepy weird.
A Bridge Too Far
Katholiko monastery is located 20km east of Chania, just off the shores of Cape Akrotiri. It is located near the exit of the gorge Avlaki, and we found it to have a mildly challenging, but very entertaining and beautiful walk.
I’ve been told its the oldest monastery in Crete, founded in the mid-11th century (I haven’t tried to confirm this because I just don’t care). Its founder was St. John the Stranger or Hermit (Agios Ioannis Xenos or Erimitis), who lived in the cave with the temple dedicated to him (there’s a celebration on September 20 which we’ll miss). The surrounding cliffs are honeycombed with cave-side condos that housed a community of hermits (nobody knows how many because…..well, they were damn hermits), while some monks lived in the cells of the monastery. When the coasts of Crete were pillaged by bands of roving the pirates the monks were forced to move to a more remote place, so they abandoned Katholiko. This is sort of like living in Marfa and deciding to move to Terlingua because someone moved in next door and their gate is 6 miles from your front door. If the monks saw the pirates land, they’d only have about 4 hours to prepare for them.
The monastery is now deserted, but can be accessed by the trail that that starts from the gates of Monastery Gouverneto (20-30 minute walk). The nicest thing about this walk is there’s a parking lot for your car and its easy to come through the gate and take the hike. In the monastery there is the Cathedral of St. John the Hermit and his Cave, the ruined monks’ cells (dank holes in the wall) and the impressive old bridge that crosses the river. Beneath the floor of the bridge there are still several storage rooms. To be honest, we’d been to Monastery Gouverneto before, but we thought you needed to find Moni Katholiko from a trail that started in Stavros, which is about 6 klicks to the west.
You can keep walking down over a dry creek bed for 10 minutes to the sea. There is supposed to be a delightful small beach and swimming with the ruins of the old harbor monastery, but it looked like a sprained ankle waiting to happen so we didn’t make this trek. If you want to get your 10,000 steps in on a nice hike on a cobble path with 100 switch-backs, this is the place for you. I’ll give it 4 stars.
VERKEYNTHOS Artist Village
I can probably start each paragraph regarding sites in Greece with “this place is really difficult to find….” which, in my mind is true. But this place really is, until you find it, then it becomes incredibly easy. Our difficulty was increased due to the fact that we’d used up all our Vodafone data for the portable Wi-Fi but didn’t know it. We had paper maps, but they were as useful as telling someone “To find Madison Square Gardens you need to go to New York. Once there, find Manhattan. Its right in the middle of Manhattan.” OK, helpful, just not very much.
We knew the artist village was in Suda (and granted Suda isn’t that large) but most of the streets are one-way the other way, wide as a sidewalk in Chevy Case, has parked cars on both sides of the road, an old dog sleeping in the center of the street, an old man on a Vespa that manages to occupy the entire road while traveling 4 kph up a hill steep enough to challenge a le Tour rider’s will on the tail end of a 200 kilometer stage. Other than that, we drove right to the village.
Once we found it, we weren’t sure it was open because we were the only visitors there. This is something we should be used to now, because its happened day after day after day. I shouldn’t complain about that, and we don’t want queues, but a few other guests makes you feel like you aren’t intruding on the artists in the studios. We should not have worried, we were welcome and the artists in all the studios very gracious. I didn’t take many pictures, because many artists don’t like that, but we did love Tetraktis pottery, and I took some pictures, and Ellen took a sculpture (which we paid for). I loved his glazes, and his quirky nature. The pictures tell the story.
In the village there are about 10 potters, a couple of jewelry places, sone painters, stone carvers, wood workers, a fabric artist and some other crafters were open on this Saturday morning. The artists were friendly, happy to have us come in, and willing to tell about their design and working techniques. I really enjoyed Tokias jewelry and sculpture, his works were very interesting and unique, the stone he used varied a lot and I could see one of his works in a very upscale house or hotel. I just couldn’t fit one into my suitcase. If you go to Chania, you should check this place out.
Therisos Gorge
Therisos Gorge is an easy drive from Chiana and a great place to hike and spend the day. When I say close, I mean only 15 klicks with the winding roads is only 40 minutes to reach the heart of the gorge. Another nice thing about it is its entirely drivable. You can’t say that for the other gorges in Crete. We wanted a hike, but others may not. I guess from end to end the gorge may only measure about 6 km long.
The gorge is rugged though with precipitous rocky slopes, rock-strewn river bed that runs along the road, alpine foliage, goats, sheep and amazing vistas. Anchoring the gorge is the beautiful little village of Theriso, which stands at the foot of the White Mountains at an altitude of 580 meters. It sort of reminds you of a high-mountain ski resort, but I didn’t find a single ski lift. Its also quite historical, which surprised us.
About 200 years ago Cretan freedom fighters entrenched themselves in the village and surrounding mountainsides and fought violent battles with the Turkish members of the occupying forces, who didn’t take kindly to this lack of respect so they burned down the village a few decades later. The Cretans finally booted the Turks in 1898, but the EU autocrats of 1900 decided to have them be run by a puppet government controlled by the Ottomans since they didn’t really want a shooting war with the Turks. A few years later, Eleftherios Venizelos, (who’s tomb we visited last week in Chania) led a full-on revolution, based in Theriso. I don’t know, it seems to me like it would be like declaring Pagosa Springs the head of a provisional government trying to take over Colorado. It’s just a bit off the main highway, ya know? Who needs Denver? Hey, it’s a Crete thing.
We really enjoyed the village and there are about a dozen really good cafés to stop and enjoy the afternoon (which was beautiful). There are also reported to be some “shy” wild goats of Crete, known as “Kri-Kri”, running along the sheer cliffs, and steep slopes of the gorge. We never saw them. The only goats we saw were wearing bells or being served for dinner.
We drove around to the summit of the gorge and got out for a beautiful hike. It was just me, Ellen, sheep, goats, and a stick we used to scrape the shit off our boots. The walk wasn’t as long as we’d have liked (we kept running into sheep gates across the roads), and it was pretty easy trekking, but that’s OK, we had to get back down to the village for lunch. We picked a place where they were grilling meat right on the front porch. It was a complex operation and the number of pits, rotisseries, and grills would put any US grill master to shame. Inside there were about a 100 people attacking piles and piles of crispy meat of every persuasion. I thought it was great. What’s not to like? Come in from a strenuous hike, have a cold beer, eat 10 pounds of grilled lamb, pork, goat and chicken, followed up by a local cake swimming in fresh honey, topped off with a shot of Raki (anise-flavoured, alcoholic drink that is popular in Turkey, Turkic countries, Albania, Greek Islands and in the Balkan countries.) What a way to end the day.
I was probably impaired on our drive back home. Not by alcohol, I think I overdosed on meat. I kept hearing Aunt Voula (Andrea Martin) saying “What do you mean he don’t eat no meat? That’s okay, that’s okay. I make lamb.” Believe me, we both ate plenty of meat. Crete is most definitely a vegetarian’s worst nightmare.
