Vacation Notes 2015: September 8th: Crete, Greece

The early bird may get the worm, but he doesn’t get to Greece any sooner. We’re scheduled to pull into port around noon.

Of course, just because you don’t have to get up it that doesn’t mean that you can’t get up. We’re in the Mediterranean—more or less—it’s early in the morning and it’s already near 90 degrees.

Somewhere on an upper deck there’s a pool, or two, going a wasting.

L***y was the first one up. She was quickly dressed—bathing suit and book—and headed poolside.

I slept in a little later but not that much later. I got dressed, woke up M**a, and headed to the upper deck for breakfast.

M**a did eventually get up in time to join me for breakfast. Me being a notoriously slow eater worked in her favor. I was still chewing on my scrambled eggs when she arrived. After finishing breakfast, we walked a few laps on the upper-most deck. Already it was hot. The magnificent Mediterranean had almost finished burning off the early-morning cloud cover. But the walk was pleasant thanks to a healthy breeze that kept us comfortable.

After completing two strenuous laps at the breakneck pace of maybe 1 or 1.5 miles per hour, Mira tired and decided she’d rather see what might be happening at the teen club. The teen club is the place on board where the teenagers can get together to complain about their parents who forced them to come along on this arduous journey. I returned to our cabin, put on my bathing suit, grabbed a book, and joined L***y by the pool.

I'm not a big fan of cold water. Although, other than perhaps myself, most people consider that a pool on board a ship in the Mediterranean in the summer could actually be cold. But, this is a vacation; it’s no time to argue the point. Lucky for me cruise-lines seem to cater to the(us)old folks. There are several whirlpools—or Jacuzzis or hot-tubs, or whatever you prefer—surrounding the main pools. They appear to have one primary temperature setting: lobster. I made two separate trips into the hot tub. Once for poached and a second time for hard-boiled.

There’s only so much pool side splendor that one can endure in a morning. L***y and I returned to our cabin and dressed for a casual lunch in the Edelweiss dining room. We were seated at a table with two couples from Canada, they were traveling together, and another couple from New York.  The topics of conversation ranged from the Seattle Seahawks to the New York Giants, to hockey, to Donald Trump, 9/11, and how we intended to spend our time while on Crete.

Having signed up for a Royal Caribbean excursion the New York couple had a set departure time and barely had time to sniff at their breakfast dishes before they had to go. We and our new Canadian friends, had a little more time to spare as we had not purchased excursion tickets and, in fact, were discouraged from leaving the ship before those who had purchased excursion tickets. I suppose that we could have fought, pushed, and bullied our way off the ship, but what’s the rush?

Eventually we did say goodbye to our breakfast companions, fetched Mira from our room and made our way toward the gangway.

Once off the ship getting into the Old Town of Chania, even without excursion tickets, was very easy. There were busses, running every 10 minutes from the terminal gates, to take us to and from the city.

We boarded the first available bus, which took us straight into the center of the old city and dropped us off Markopoulo Square. As we were on foot and basically ad-libbing our day in Chania, our first stop was, naturally enough, near to where they dropped us: the Municipal Market of Chania.

The market-at least on the outside-has a little bit of the look and feel of some ancient American municipal building. However, in spite of its 1940s American façade it is slightly over a century old. (Only in Europe can you say only 100 years old with a straight face. I know, there are older places in the Americas too, but with few exceptions, these are preserved as historical landmarks and have not remained a part of everyday life. When was the last time you went to a Mayan village on human-sacrifice day?)

The Municipal Market of Chiana is contains a fair number of shops catering to the tourist trade, but at its heart it remains a farmers market. Its high-ceilinged interior and basic cross floor plan is likely the genesis of the concept that grand market places in London, Milan, and Naples appear to have borrowed from. The butcher shops and cheese shops maintain a certain provincial charm, even if they do appear a little too edgy to consider an actual purchase. Its plain concrete floors, a few too many indoor pigeons, and a significant cat population help the marketplace maintain its genuine Crete feel—or, at least what I suspect is a genuine Crete/Chania feel.

A couple of t-shirts, scarves, and bars of soap later we left the market and down Tsourderon. IN this case “down” means right and “right” means northwest, more or less.

Tsourderon, in addition to being unpronounceable for an American is either a street, or square, or avenue, or lane. I don't know what the people of Crete would call this but in America this would be referred to as a pedestrian square. It is lined with shops and restaurants that have been carved from stone and somehow fitted into centuries old buildings.

We continued down Tsourderon, after making a stop to buy Mira and myself some new sandals, and

turned left on Daskalogianni Way. (I seriously doubt that this has ever been referred to as "way", but it seems to fit in that sentence. We walked past several shops--including a scooter rental—to the Temple of St. Rocco. Unfortunately for us St. Rocco must have been on holiday. We could not go inside.

Continuing through the 1821 Square—I have no idea of the origin of that name, consider this your Google assignment—we came to the Dominican Temple of St. Nicolas. What apparently started as a pagan temple has been conquered, and I suppose you could say converted, several times since its construction in 1320.

Leaving the temple, we did some free-lance roaming in an area known as Splantzia. It consist of homes, generally several stories high, arranged in a labyrinth of alleyways, just big enough for some cars, but only if they're barely wider than a scooter. Most of the homes are stone construction, and then covered with a smooth stucco that is then painted, usually in very bright color. Favored colors appear to be yellow, orange, and white.

Emerging from the labyrinthine Splantzia—Labyrinthine is a word I’ll come to use a lot when describing the streets and alley ways of Greece—we came upon the Venizelio Conservatory of Chania. From outside we could hear the music of semi-talented pianist wafting from the open windows. The heat might possibly affect the sound of wafting music as from L***y's vantage point she heard wonderful music. By the time the music reached my ears it taken on the sound of a hundred monkeys attempting to compose a sonata. In any event, we were listening to students practicing, so overall, the Venizelio Conservatory of Chania was of little significance to us except as a geographic marker. The combination of heat and an exhausted water supply was beginning to get the better of us. We retraced our steps to one block short of Tsouderon, deciding to take a slightly different return route.

Chatzimichal Ntaliani is similar to Tsouderon in that it is a pedestrian alley-way, however while Tsouderon features shops Chatzimichal Ntaliani belongs to the string of restaurants that line the street. It was at this point that I wondered why places like Crete don't lobby the Cruise Lines to please stay overnight. It was obvious, as we were slowly making our way to the bus that would take us back to our ship, that the real fun was still a few hours away from beginning. Merchants were setting up tables and chairs in the alley. They were building what would be one continuous, street-long restaurant. No doubt there would be food, music and a whole lot of drinking.

Our final path turn back to the bus took us down Mousouron. L***y and M**a did stop to make a few additional purchases on one of the many shops along this route.

We boarded our bus exactly where it had dropped us off and returned to our ship.

Mira, exhausted and perhaps feeling the effects of a day of sun and heat, went immediately to our stateroom where she collapsed into her bed. L***y and I, washed up and went to our reserved sit-down dinner, the semi-fancy one, not the buffet, and once again enjoyed a fine meal.

We have an early stop tomorrow, so it's, theoretically at least, going to be a short night. After a few top-deck strolls, and a late dinner for M**a, we retreated to our room ready to tuck in for the night. Given the level of service on this ship it wouldn’t be the least bit surprising to learn that we could call room service and them tuck us in, but that seems to be asking a bit much—at least for tonight.