Crete

19 December 2023 – Rethymno, Crete, Greece

Crete is beautiful and sunny. It feels as though we have returned to summer thanks to the warm weather and the dry mountainous landscape lined with low shrubs and palm trees. Sirius was very appreciative of the heat and was less grumpy than usual. We arrived in Chania, a pretty town full of old whitewashed buildings and lined with Christmas shops and decorations. Even the boats in the harbour had matching gold lights strung from the bow to the top of the mast and then back down to the stern. It felt like we could have spent ages there, even though when I try to remember what we actually did I can’t come up with much.

There were a lot more tourists there than in the other parts of Greece we have been to, so the town was pleasantly bustling. We wandered past many beautiful pottery stores and walked through a packed street market where we bought lots of clementines and olives. There is a maritime museum a short way away from where Festina Lente was docked on the town quay which had replicas of ships sailed in the area, from Minoan to Ancient Greek to Venetian, as well as a room filled with giant shimmering shells. We even managed to squeeze in time for Hanukkah dinner: my mom made latkes and I made sufganiyot. We would have liked to stay in town for longer but it wasn’t secure from the strong north winds that were coming.

There is a NATO base near Chania which has regular target practices into the ocean - we could hear the booms from whatever they were firing. My mom went to the port office to figure out when we would be allowed to pass through the area and when it would be closed for drills and they said it would be fine to leave on Friday. When Friday rolled around she asked again and was told that they would be firing all day so we had to delay our departure until the weekend. The weather was also better if we left later so this actually worked out and we left on Saturday without being blown up.

We sailed a little ways along the north coast to the town of Rethymno, which is bigger than Chania and also nice but a bit less picturesque. On Sunday the bad weather hit so we hunkered down and I baked stollen.

Christmas stollen – Rethymno, Crete, Greece

My mom and Jonas harvested a mini Christmas tree then he and I put up the decorations we had bought ages ago in a rare instance of being over-prepared. We strung tinsel beneath the big saloon windows then arranged Christmas lights around the perimeter of the main cabin and the galley. We only had a few ornaments but me and my mom folded some origami stars for the tree. Everything will probably come falling down when we next go sailing but for now it looks nice.

Putting up Christmas lights – Rethymno, Crete, Greece

Christmas tree – Rethymno, Crete, Greece

My mom and I also went to the grocery store, where an employee walked past us multiple times pushing a shopping cart full of whole skinned pigs for hanging in the back of the store. There was also a banana branch in the fruit aisle (Crete grows its own bananas) where we were provided with a knife to cut the fruit off the branch ourselves before going to the checkout.

Bananas at the grocery store – Rethymno, Crete, Greece

Today and yesterday we rented a car to see some of the ancient sites on the island. On Monday we drove to the south coast to see the Roman ruins at Gortyna, which was the Romans’ capital when they occupied Crete. There wasn’t much there but the amphitheatre and the church were still pretty intact. There were supposedly other ruins around such as temples and baths but we couldn’t find them, even after we walked along the side of the highway and crawled up part of a hill trying to make sense of the map the site gave us.

Then we drove to Phaistos, the second largest Minoan palace after Knossos. The Minoans were the ancient people of Crete who flourished from around 2000 - 1450 BCE. Not much is known about them as Linear A, their writing system, has not yet been deciphered, though some of their beautiful art and architecture has been preserved.

The next day, we drove to Knossos, the most famous Minoan ruin and the mythical palace of King Minos and the Minotaur. It had been partially reconstructed when it was excavated in the early twentieth century by British archaeologist Arthur Evans. Today, the modern restoration of some of the buildings, with painted pillars and frescoes reconstructed to how they may have appeared, can be seen at the site.

Reconstructed fresco of a griffin – Knossos, Crete, Greece

We then drove to the Heraklion Archaeological Museum, which was great because it was full of Minoan pottery, frescoes, and later Archaic Greek and Roman statues. We thought about sailing Festina Lente into Heraklion, as it is in the direction we are trying to go, but everyone we talked to said they had a bad experience there so we went with the car instead. I could have spent hours in the museum. I especially loved looking at the frescoes depicting bull jumping, processions, people, and more, which the whole top floor was dedicated to. I also liked the Roman statues, especially the one of Pluto, Persephone, and Cerberus.

Even though it is west of us and we’re trying to go east, we’ll probably sail back to Chania tomorrow because it seems like a great place to spend Christmas – that is, if we can avoid the shooting range; we asked a bunch of officials what the times were for target practice and the results remain inconclusive.

Holidays in Chania

Visiting Ruins on Peloponnesos

Festina Lente