when the sun shines brightly on Crete

To laugh, at the beauty of it, at the splendid sun that pours down at us here, today, at the blue waters of the Aegean, the warm breeze that comes in from the south -- to laugh at it all, the mishaps, the aborted adventures but also the ones that surpassed expectations. Yes, to laugh, or at least smile at this radiant day on the island of Crete.

But first, there is breakfast, prepared by Diana (yes, that is her name!), in the sunny kitchen of the Mama Nena.






We managed to eat our way through the entire marble cake and so she baked us another. With olive oil again. And bits of chocolate throughout.







Always, she encourages us to finish with yogurt. Dribbled with the honey of the thyme covered hills.






And what do we have planned? The clouds have almost completely receded -- sucked in by the mountains. There, they fight their last battle, but we can tell they don't stand a chance: it's going to be a fine day!

We don't want to drive much. Ed is tired of it, I am scared of it (even on this gentle day of a drive equal to maybe 20 kilometers each way, we have two near misses -- one by a passing car and another when a dog runs out in front of us, forcing Ed to slam the brakes hard). So we go to the Akrotiri peninsula. It's the next bit of land jutting out into the sea just to the east of Chania. And though it's close, it feels oceans away.










Oh that blue sky! How fortunate we are to have these last days on Crete be so full of the topaz blue and azure green and all shades in between.

We make our way slowly, leisurely, to the tip of the peninsula. That's Stavros beach -- as viewed from the hills to the side the little bay.





It's nearing sixty right now and though most anyone here would regard this as winter jacket weather, some have a different attitude.





Stavros beach may be familiar to anyone who has seen the movie Zorba the Greek. They filmed the last scene here -- the dance on the beach. Stavros Beach. Not surprisingly, there is a taverna with the name Zorba to the side. Closed now for the season.

We're in Stavros because I read somewhere that you could hike along the edge of hills that jut down to the water and reach the Agia Triada monastery and then, too a gorge -- for additional hiking. All this turns out to be not exactly correct. But, we don't know this yet. We find a path (which looks remarkably like the goat paths that traverse the mountainside) and set out along the coast.

I ask Ed if a goat could send rocks hurling down towards us. It's a pretty steep incline -- enough so that we walk much of it in the shade of the northern slope. He comments that we're seeing more sheep than goats right now.

Indeed.




We continue in this way for an hour, maybe longer.

There are clumps of herbs and brush and quite a number of wild bulbs, threatening a splendid spring showing of flowers.





And old, crumbling shelters, made of the boulders from the hillside.






At what point do we decide to turn back? When we encounter the local foragers, with plastic sacks of herbs and unknown to us plants? I ask them if we can reach the gorge and monastery this way and the old man shakes his head. His hand indicates sharp incline. Dangerous. A word I understand.

Even then, we continue a bit more. But after a while, I stumble, sending rocks down toward the water. It's not really a threatening stumble -- I have plenty of space to catch myself. And I do so by putting my hand down on a shrub. A dozen sharp needles pierce my palm, as if I were smacking down a porcupine with fully extended quills.

Ed tries to remove some of the spikes from my hand, as I stand there wondering how the sheep know to steer clear of the prickly menace.





And still we continue.  But, within a few more steps the path becomes indistinguishable from the treks of animals. It's always tempting to go just a little more, but by now there are too many signs that this hike is not meant to reach a destination.






I am quite happy to be on the retreat. On a credible path, bathed by sunshine...





Smiling at the loveliness of the view before me.





Alright, we could not reach the monastery on foot. Let's try by car. It's the usual guessing game: sometimes there'll be a directional sign, other times not so much. Go this way! No, maybe not. Turn around. Okay, maybe that was right after all... Eventually we do find it and it is really quite enchanting.






Picture yourself cloistered here,  making olive oil for the market, retreating into the quiet of the courtyard scented by jasmine in the evening.














I ask the priest if the church is open. I don't think he understands English, but he does pull out a huge key and manipulates it so that I can go inside. It's quite pretty, with a good bit of delicate ornamentation, but I don't linger. Another priest is engaged in rituals of worship. I am the interloper. I retreat.

I join Ed in the courtyard. He has made the usual friend there.





We're ready to leave, but I'm curious about the gorge and the hike down to it. Ah, the gorge. That's in another monastery. The Gouverneto Monastery.

It's not far. Maybe five kilometers. We follow the winding road (what else is new)...





... up to the Monastery and there we find a sign. Winter hours: 16 - 19. Well now, that's twenty minutes from now. We nap in the car waiting for permission to enter.

And when it is in fact 4 pm, we walk through the gate and bypass the chapels and courtyards altogether. (No photos for you: they're not allowed here.) The goal is to find the gorge and the relics of an older monastery within in it. I read on someone's Internet site that it's a hefty descent (and therefore also ascent on the return).

Ah, to be a goat... How do they do it? How do they keep from tumbling down into the ravine?





We find the path. It's a well kept path, but it is steep. It makes its way down, between the hills and then, after another bend and twist, you see it -- the gorge.





... and within the cliffs, there are caves, and sweeping stone walls arch the hills, and really, the place is hauntingly beautiful.









It's 4:30 now and we have a bit of a concern about daylight. The sun sets sometime after five. We still haven't reached the relics of the older monastery. (I want to have a conversation with the monks or priests who set the winter hours to be so late -- why give us permission to enter the gorge so late,  when there isn't enough light to climb out of it afterwards?)

Finally. We are between cliffs of copper stone. And there it is -- Greece's oldest monastery (or relics of one). Dating to the 11th century.





I tell Ed we must hurry back up.  Just a minute more, to walk among walls of stone that have seen centuries roll by - one after another, and another and then a handful more.





In the end, we have plenty of daylight to help guide us up again. The sun sets just as we begin our trip home, to Chania, to the Mama Nena.





Dinner? Yes, well, we'd promised the affable Steolis -- the owner, cook, waiter of Chania's vegetarian (and vegan if you're so inclined) restaurant that we'd stop by there on this night. (We encountered him in front of his place the other day and he enticed us with breads and cakes and we said okay okay okay, we'll eat here Sunday!)

(On the way to dinner, we meet again the cat with the mustache. This time he is willing to pose for a photo.)






We are the only diners at Steolis' place this evening (his business picks up in the summer season), unless you count his daughter and her friend.





Steolis tells us we are here on a good day because he has just baked many loaves of bread.





And prepared an eggplant dish with garlic, raisins and pomegranate seeds. In fact, he sort of takes over picking dishes for us -- half a portion of the chestnuts and onions, some wilted greens from the hills, a pie stuffed with dock leaves, yogurt with honey. And a mystery tea made from herbs that only Steolis could possibly name.













Eating here is sort of like eating at your parent's place again: you don't dare voice objections and you have to be prepared for stories that are not only about the food but also have a bit of a philosophy of life component to them. Ed and I meekly eat and listen and the food is actually quite good, so it is a fine experience. Though we breathe a sigh of relief when we're out. Sort of like getting permission to leave the table after you've finished.

The walk back to Mama Nena is lovely: the stars are out tonight. We're hoping for good weather for the next and final day on the island.

E4, where are you?

You could look at this day and think --  ah, well, an aborted adventure. Maybe I have a rose tint to my glasses because for me, it was a superb day. Despite the aborted adventure.


First, the wake up. That's always great. For the countless times that I ask for rooms with views, I am sometimes successful, sometimes not so much. But I think it will be a long, long time before I again have a view as good as this:



sunrise over the Venetian harbor


And the breakfast? Fantastic! Matina's assistant prepares a huge platter of scrambled eggs with bits of ham and it is so good that Ed, who does not in the normal run of things eat ham, consumes every last scrap of it.

And if you think that was it for breakfast -- not so! The assistant (she does have a name: I resolve to figure out how to ask about it tomorrow) then whips up these lovely blintz-like flatcakes. With honey and (goat) cheese! -- she shows us how Cretons eat it.





Utterly delicious. With a large pitcher of fresh juice at the side and the usual array of breads, cheeses, olives, cakes...

We day dream about taking Matina's assistant back home with us. We wonder if she'd mind living in the farmhouse. Whether she'd come up with something new for breakfast every day of the year, just as she so effortlessly does here. In the alternative, understanding that she would probably prefer to remain in Crete, we could maybe settle in at the Mama Nena permanently and come down for breakfast like this every day, at 9:45, as seems to be our style, following the scent of coffee, cake and bread, warming in the oven...

Alright. Piggish thoughts. Time to move on with the day. And it is a lovely beginning of a week-end.





People are out and about. Many with sun glasses against the strong sun that is promising temperatures near sixty.





We have been mulling over the possibility of hiking on the south shore of the island, but each day, I put it off for the next day, or the one after. It's the drive that holds me back. We'd have to cross the mountains to get there and truly, even the most careful driving here makes my heart race. The turns are treacherous, the surfaces slick, potted, narrow. And there is plenty of evidence that I am not just my usual difficult passenger self. All along the roads you see small chapels -- memorials to those who did not survive a deep bend in the road. A reminder that others before you have tried and failed.

It is possible to take the bus to the south (if you cling to the belief that a young Creton driver will fare better on the twists and turns), but to return the same day, you would have to leave at 5 and come back long after sunset. So now you're in a bus, navigating said roads in the dark. And you miss out on a Mama Nena breakfast. I just can't get myself to make that kind of a committment.

So I suggest a compromise -- drive just to the northern tip of the island and pick up the beginning of the great E4 -- a trail that has one end in southern Spain, then crosses all of Europe and ends right here in Greece.

Two things about that plan: it ignores the threat of rain that I keep reading about on my trusted weather site. And it ignores that this is Greece, after all and trail markings here -- well, I wrote about that already: they're scant.

We spend quite a while driving on narrow roads in search of postings. We interrupt olive pickers.





We disturb sheep herds (this herd seems as if it's part of some eery still life: gnarled trunk and sheep, frozen into eternity).





And finally, as a result of nothing more than dumb luck, we find it: a marker for the E4.

The problem is that we cannot find the next one. Roads and paths spin off this way and that way and we try to follow each in the hope that there will be a confirmation that we are on the right path...





...but inevitably we will find ourselves on a scraggy hill, or in the midst of someone's olive grove (and btw, the green of the undergrowth is that intense -- a bed of clover-like flora that is just as radiant as the photo above indicates)...

And now the skies are showing some serious turmoil up there.





Who will win -- the gentle whites or the rain-soaked grays?

The grays have it! The rain comes down. I have a rain jacket. Back at the Mama Nena. (Ed doesn't even have that: he threw his little pouch into his backpack. Turned out it was a pack cover, not a jacket.) We're getting soaked. We run back to the car, laughing at ourselves and at the ill fated walk. (It's easy to laugh in a warm dry shelter.)

We return to Chania where the rains are more intermittent.





And the children ride their sailboats in the harbor, oblivious to it all.






In the evening Ed asks me to search out some interesting eateries. Greek seafood (where the seafood isn't just octopus) would be nice...

I pick out three beloved by reviewers suggestions. We visit all three. They're closed for the season.

But it's not as if Chania lacks restaurants. There are dozens of places, big and small. And still,  they avoid fish as if somehow that was for the the everyday home meal. Grilled fish -- ho hum. Tell us another!

Never mind, we'll load up on fish in Istanbul. We stop at a place that has an inviting counter. You can watch the cooks do their thing right on the other side. It's not really a taverna. More of a modern Greek place with other Mediterranean twists to it. And we're thrilled with the food. A sumptuous salad, a Mediterranean pasta dish and a wonderful grilled chicken with hunks of grilled cheese accompanying it. (We share each of those three dishes.)





It's a satisfying and inexpensive meal and as we finish (at around 9:30), we notice that people are only now starting to come in. Crete is like Spain in this regard. You don't even think of food until the last hours of the day. Though they share this with the rest of Greece -- the restaurants here, once they open (at around 1 pm), they stay open. For twelve hours. If you're hungry at 4, you eat then. If you want to wait until 11, that's fine too.

It's a lively evening at the cafes of the old harbor. We know that the sounds of laughter will reverberate across the old harbor all the way until 3 or 4 in the morning. A comforting sound of youthful joy, out there, under the now starlit Cretan skies.

sheep on the island of Crete

I look out the window. School children, passing below. They could be schoolchildren back home (except that in most any country in Europe, young kids, boys included, will be holding hands and walking in pairs; I've never seen that in the States).





The skies look like they're clearing. The promised showers may dissipate.





The weather changes here quickly, unexpectedly. Were we perfect travelers, we would get going early, when the sun is most promising. But we are not perfect travelers. One of us stays up too late, another wakes up and works on a blog in the middle of the night, we get up late, eat breakfast even later.






(Today, in addition to all those breads, cakes, cheeses, eggs and endless glasses of freshly squeezed juice, Matina's helper offers us a pancake stuffed with fennel from the hills.)


 


Matina joins us at the table. We have so many questions for her! Is your farmhouse as pretty as the Mama Nena? Do you live together? Do you eat together, all of you, your brother, sister, mother? (The answer to the last two is no -- they have their own homes, though within 200 meters of each other.) How many olives do you pick from each tree? How many bags of olives does it take to make olive oil? (A tree can shake down five bags of olives, two bags of olives will give you a kilo of olive oil.) Where do you sell your oranges? At the market? In Athens? (Mostly in Crete, though they sell them for orange juice concentrate as well.) Are you concerned about Greece? About its participation in the EU?

On that last set of questions I got a long pause and then the comment about Crete living under a different god...


And when we're finally ready to head out, the skies turn blue and I have great hopes for staying clear of the predicted rain. We're not ambitious today, but we do want to hike some. Our great walking treks have fizzled in the last few days. We want to move more.

We spin the car south of Chania, along the New National Highway. That's their name for it. It's Crete's attempt at a limited access road, though my oh my, it is not what you and I are used to back home. You see a little wear and tear on the signage, for example. Or, graffiti completely obliterating what is written there.  
There is an exit! I tell Ed.  
Our exit? -- he asks, sensibly!  
I don't know!

You get used to it. And the road is so much better than the mountain twists and turns, were fallen rocks often are there to greet you after a hairpin turn and missing sections cause the underbelly of the car to groan in dissatisfaction. I don't ever get used to the tailgating that drivers do here, but really, we are fine, we are fine. Ed continues to drive and I try to put my passenger terrors to rest.

We turn off the little stretch of the New National to visit the coastal villages just south of Chania.



olives everywhere!




multitasking


And we stop at the supermarket to pick up a bottle of Crete wine (because it's so fun to look at the options in grocery stores in other countries!) and to study the prices of olive oils.



five liter containers


Who would buy at a store, when Matina tells us it's so much cheaper to buy directly from a mill? Well, you run out, I suppose and you don't always have time to go directly to the producers. But also, there is the matter of the expats. In the coastal villages, we hear English, again and again. British English. Here's a family where (I am guessing this)  they're visiting the expat grandma and grandpa and the mom and dad have promised their sons a swim in the sea, no matter what the weather (because, really, why else would you go in the water when it's in the fifties outside).





And these two English men -- they are here for a sail and though it takes them a while to get started, they have a glorious run of it, out in the protected bay!





And Ed gets wistful. Ah, to sail again! And we go into our routine -- one that we have repeated so many times, in so many places!
Wouldn't it be wonderful to have a small house here, with a view towards the bay... 
which one?  
How about that one, with a terrace toward the sun! 
Yes, okay, a little too big for us though, no? 
...and I would stay home and write and you could go sailing every day.... 
even if it rains? 
Well, no maybe not then... we would study our Greek then.
You're better at languages...
And so on and so forth. There was a time when I thought the game had at least a touch of seriousness to it, but I've learned a long time ago that Ed loves to speculate and imagine the unusual, the grand, the impossible and then he puts it aside and we come back to our everyday routines.

We walk up the hills above the sea and pick the perfect spot for a house... there, away from the others, facing the see... Sigh... Then we turn in, Ed pets a mule (the face is that of a donkey, but the tail is almost that of a horse) and retreat to the car.





I had an idea that we could hike along the coast here, but paths are elusive and roads are narrow and have the presence of the occasional car, which is not pleasant for contemplative trekking. Giving up on this, I direct us to a lake, thought to be quite special and not too far from the coast.

On the way, we pass lovely old beehives and were I buying things to take home, I would certainly buy honey from Crete because it is rich with the aromas of the herbs that grow on the hills here and so very intense!





And we pass flocks of sheep. Again and again.


 


Including these guys. (First they ran away, then they stood, transfixed, staring at me in unison.)





And I pause, perhaps feeling that I did sheep a disservice yesterday when I called them dumb. So I offer you probably the last clip of this trip -- and again, forgive the quality of it because though I was no longer leaning across Ed's lap to film it, I was battling a wind that is unfortunately audible in the one minute fragment that I post for you here. But forget the wind and listen to the voluminous song of the bells and note, please, how in their behavior, sheep are less charming than goats.





Though perhaps I am not one who should be commenting on the sharpness of others. Many would not think that a hike by a lake at the foot of these hills would be a good idea, given the tumultuous clouds galloping in from all sides.





But, we want to walk some more and the lake offers at least the possibility of a trail (hiking is not really practiced much here: trails are few and markings are even fewer).

We get out of the car just as the gentle showers come down on us. And we persevere! Now, take these sheep: they know to seek shelter!





Not us -- we are so determined to hike that we keep on walking. I think about the radiators at the Mama Nena, feeling very grateful that we have a way of drying off quickly.

And we give up not because of the rain, but because the path ends without warning, without reason really. (Here's a photo of Ed gallantly searching for anything that looks like a trail, finding only a farmer's field, nothing more. And the rain comes down.)





Though not everywhere. There is a patch of blue, giving us a nice, gentle rainbow over the olive groves...






And so we become determined and we attack the lake (yes, there is a lake...)





... once again, now from the other side. Initially with some success. (The smell of a damp forest here is fantastic. In fact, the rain brought out all the scents of the roadside shrubs and herbs so forcefully that when we pulled up to the side of the road for a quick nap -- we like to do that sometimes -- an open window gave us a heavenly blast of mint, sage, oregano and who knows what else.)





But here, too, the trail ends. This time at a goat shed. With goats. Good looking animals. And so smart, too! (I avoid ordering goat meat at the tavernas here. It's always an option, but somehow I can't get myself to enjoy the thought of a roasted goat.)






So we give up. I tell myself that we had two short hikes instead of one long one and that tomorrow we'll try harder for something more challenging. For now, we have errands in town to run -- procuring a bus schedule is one of them, for possible treks that avoid the use of a car -- getting cookies is another.






Dinner? We eat at a taverna (called "Tamam") right next to the Mama Nena. Matina likes it and we like it as well. It has a limited menu, but as always, the Greek salad is tremendously good...





...and we love the wild mushrooms here as well, so we eat a plate of those too and then, wanting to get my fill of Greek seafood, I once again order grilled calamari.





...and I cannot not finish it, though it is without question as fresh and honest as you can have it. (Ed asks for the last little piece to be wrapped up for home. I look at him questioningly. For the cats, he whispers to me. Maybe for the one with the moustache...)