This morning I wake up after a week of raging on the sea with The Yacht Week with 40+ other monsooners.
Our biggest monsoon ever now sadly behind us.
I want to cry. And I want to rest.
And with my first every music festival experience at Tomorrowland — the world’s largest — in less than a week away, I need to take a break. After a very emotional brunch with Gina, Jenny, Michelle, Gina, Christina, Jay, Sujay, Kunal, Evan, Amelia, and Sidian and a 5:15pm afternoon flight from Athens to Chania, those of us leftover – Amelia, myself, Henry, and meeting up with Gul at the gate, landed in Greece’s largest island of Crete.
After landing, we got our car rental at Royal outside arrivals and drove first past the Venizelos Graves for a hilltop view over Chania for sunset.
After almost getting stuck in the tiny driveways around a mound outside the old city, Henry’s past life as an LA courier driver stepped in to save the day and re-parked our car about a 5 minute walk away from the old city. The 4 of us then walked to our lodgings in central Chania at 11City Hotel.
After a prolonged check-in process with a sweet old man who loved to talk, we enjoyed a late dinner under the vines at To Naxi.
The next morning Mel landed at an ungodly 4:55am from ATH and luckily I had already been awake to let her in to catch up on her sleep. And by nap I mean a proper sleep in that had all 5 of us waking up by 1pm and having breakfast next door at Phyllos by 2pm.
And just as we were about to chow down, Rucha from my 2017 Balkans trip happened to be standing only 20 feet away with her newly married husband. She recognized me!
After recovering from this serendipity and after paying for breakfast we then set out for an afternoon walking tour of Chania with the Etz Hayyim Synagogue next door. Although desecrated since the destruction of the Jewish community by the Nazis in 1944, this synagogue has remained the only Jewish monument in Crete for over 50 years and sadly represents the success of the Nazis in having ended 2300 years of Jewish life on Crete.
The structure was restored in 1999 after 3 years of work, taking it off of the World Monument Fund’s list of most endangered sites.
Next we strolled north to the Maritime Museum of Crete for its 9am opening and vivid depiction of maritime Crete from the Bronze Age to the present.
We returned the next day when it opened at 9am to see the harbor from its elevated perch:
A grand display of model ships amidst a mostly World War 2 narrative comprises the inside of the museum for €4 per person.
From the museum we walked along the Old Venetian Port of Chania. It’s a leisurely 20 minute walk to the Lighthouse of Chania.
Walking around the inner old city, we passed by old Minoan ruins.
We then headed back south to where our hotel was, stopping at Splantzia Square
St. Nikolas’ church is right behind it; originally built for the Dominican Order the church was then turned into a mosque during the Ottoman occupation before reconverted to its present designation as an Orthodox church.
From the square we walked south to Old Chania Market, currently under renovations. Built in 1913 as fish, meat, and vegetable market for the city, it officially opened to the public 3 days after the island of Crete united with Greece.
During World War II, most of the marketplace grounds were used as a storage space for the occupying Nazi army.
From the market we walked back up north to Chania Cathedral Trimartiti. The Cathedral was built in 1860 during the Ottoman rule of the island where there once was a Byzantine Church-turned-soap factory after Ottoman Turks sacked Chania in1645.
There’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it entrance to the Our Lady Catholic church that hides within. It faces the cathedral on Chalidon Street.
The church was built in 1879 on the grounds of a Capuccin monastery and monk-run hospital that had existed since 1566.
If you have extra time like we did, we then drove 25 minutes west to the village of Malame where a German Soldier Cemetery lies on Kaukales Hill:
This also marks site of the first airborne invasion in the history of mankind: The Battle of Crete.
This site is considered to be one of the proudest moments in Greek history as the Nazis took the same amount of time to conquer the Netherlands, Belgium and central and northern France as it took them to conquer Crete.
Therefore Greeks implore not to see this site as a Nazi war memorial but a sign of Cretan valor and an act of reconciliation between the Germans and Greeks after the Second World War.
It is also known to be where Kyria Eleni, an old woman dressed in black, is seen to light candles for the dead soldiers. If you ask her why, she will tell you that she hopes that a German daughter would be doing the same for her father who had been murdered in a concentration camp.
We then drove back to Chania old town for dinner at Chrisostomos, which came at the recommendation of our hotel, and turned in earlier to reset our clocks.
- At time of posting in Chania, it was 29 °C - Humidity: 52% | Wind Speed: n/a | Cloud Cover: steamy and wet heat