Alaskan Bulgarian

Why Cretans Aren't All That Bad

The biggest surprise from Crete was the presence of snow capped mountains in the middle of the island during winter. We could see the mountains from both Iraklion and Hania and, especially in Hania, seeing snowy mountains from the coast reminded me a little of home.

The other surprise was that most tourists, when they arrive on Crete, go through Iraklion. Maybe the town springs to life in the summer, when all of the hostels and hotels open for the droves wanting to see Knossos, but during the off season the only life we saw was a thousands-strong flock of birds passing between two or three trees one early morning in the center of town. We stayed at a nice hotel that, like all hotels on Crete, had triples available. The fact that three people could easily get around the island in the off season made the trip easier and impressed us quite a bit.

Knossos, however, did not. The whole thing smacked of a Disneyland attraction. Most that is left is fake, rebuilt by Arthur Evans, the man who discovered it. The frescoes are all in the Iraklion museum and the only thing the palace offers these days seems to be a really nice view of the surrounding farmland. This all hit me pretty hard, or at least as hard as old, irrelevant things can hit a person. I’ve spent my life enjoying Greek mythology. I could probably place the point where Icarus fell into the Sea of Crete trying to escape Knossos. I can see the entire labyrinth where Theseus stalked the Minotaur and finished it off. I’ve grown up with an image of Knossos. It may not be anything like the real thing was, and it probably isn’t close. But I didn’t need Evans’ half-assed interpretation of the whole thing to guide me along the way. I hope it helps some tourists enjoy the place a little more, because it certainly didn’t do me any good.

Kate had come dying to see the bull-leaping fresco which wasn’t there, I had come wanting to see the place where a great palace in my imagination had once stood, and Jeff had just come not wanting to be bored. We left after two or three hours (after eating lunch) saying goodbye to Knossos and laughing about all of our “fond memories.” Like the time we went down those stairs, remember? Or the time I had to duck under a doorway? Wow, that was fun.

That night, instead of going to what appeared to be Iraklion’s one club, we hung out at the hotel and made fun of poems in the “New Yorker”s Jeff had brought. Then we made fun of how pretentious we were. The next morning we got out of Iraklion as soon as we were ready to leave.

We had wanted to go from Crete to Santorini, in order to see as much of the good stuff as possible. What we learned on Crete, however, was that nothing in the off season went from Crete to the surrounding islands. Not having time to go all the way back to Athens and down to Santorini, we decided to go west to Xania instead, with the vague hope that it would be a better port city than Iraklion.

Coming into the bus station, I was less than optimistic. The town on the drive in had looked just like the city we had left, and the surrounding buildings didn’t look very quaint or beautiful. But we bucked up, grabbed our gear, and made our way to the harbor, where the trusty guide book told us we might find some open hotels. When we got to the shore, we were ecstatic.

More than a harbor, it seemed to be a reflecting pool. Ships came in between the lighthouse at the end of the breakwater and a Venetian fort on the edge of the city, but they quickly turned to the left and docked behind a row of beautifully crumbly Venetian buildings and an old mosque that we all thought looked like something out of the first Star Wars movie. The rest of the harbor, the water near the mostly empty cafes and hotels, was less than four feet deep and never saw more than a single boat in our two nights in the city. Every building along this calm pool had a café in front and a hotel behind.

Where every other door in Iraklion had been a car rental agency or travel office, ways to get out of town, every other door in Hania was a hotel and, in the off season, they seemed to be looking for customers. The first place we stopped in at had triples for 60 Euro, which we suspected was a bit high. Nevertheless, I went in to ask about the rooms.

“Sure, we have rooms,” The manager said, tense. “Where are you from? What are you doing here?”

“We’re Americans,” I replied. Kate and Jeff had stayed outside with the bags. “We’re here in Greece for the holidays.”

“You aren’t a sailor then? None of you are sailors?”

“No.” I paused. “No, none of us are sailors.”

“Fine. There’s a room for you if you aren’t sailors.”

I told this story to Kate and Jeff and we walked on to the next hotel, confused. Jeff came out of the next place with an offer for a triple the first night for fifty Euro and two rooms the next for seventy. He had already accepted based on his happiness with the first night’s room, but we all decided we’d look around more the next morning.

The room Jeff had found rivaled any hotel room I’d ever seen in pure originality. It had a small whirlpool installed between the door to the room and the bathroom, and a large queen-size, curtained bed dominated one end of the room with two twin beds on the other side. The room had a great view of the harbor from a small balcony, and many small photos from times in Hania long passed.

The bathtub in the middle of the room had been the selling-point for Jeff, and he used it—in swimming trunks and reading a New Yorker—while Kate and I were both in the room. It reminded me of the captain on a certain ship in one of the Hitchhiker’s books, but that only added to the room’s, um, character.

The next day, Jeff and I walked two doors down looking for a better room for New Year’s Eve. We walked up to a hotel on a small street with a strange sign on the door:

Rooms available:
1 – 35 Euro
3 – 35 Euro
7 – 30 Euro
Keys in the doors

Intrigued by the prices, we went in. A small table sat in the lobby with a basket of cards, a basket of fruit, and a taped-down note that read: “No receptionist? No problem. Fill out a card, leave it on the desk and take an envelope.” The envelopes sat in a neat pile next to the basket of cards and had simple information for payment. If we couldn’t find a receptionist, we would only have to slide the full envelope under the door marked “private” on the second floor.

We went up to the rooms and found a housekeeper who, although she spoke little English, showed us the three available rooms. They were neat, almost sterile. They all had great views of the harbor, and room 1 had a curtained double bed below a small loft that had two twins. Already sold, we went upstairs to see if there was something up there that might possibly fulfill our expectations that this hotel was too good to be true.

On the floor above, there was a terrace with three tables and a small in-door kitchen. Inside the kitchen were drinks, cookies, and place settings with the simple, taped-down rule that all that was there was ours to use, with the requirement that we keep it neat and tidy.

While we rushed back to pay off the last hotel and drag Kate and our bags to the new one as soon as possible, it struck me that this new hotel had almost taken on fairy tale proportions, as if the owners were trying to make us content and chubby in order to do something to us. That never happened.

Instead, we had the most relaxing, peaceful, value-filled stay I’ve ever had in a hotel. Kate made it known every ten minutes or so that she wanted to live there. In the afternoon we sat on the terrace and Jeff and I played chess while Kate contented herself with making tea and delivering cookies while enjoying the view of the city and surrounding mountains from the terrace. From the same terrace later that night we watched some early fireworks with a French family and the owner of the hotel, who seemed kind, but just as skittish as his usual absences and proliferation of notes would indicate.

After a couple of drinks and olives given to us by the French family, we went down to the city to grab some dinner. After walking all the way into town and back out, we decided that the only place open for dinner on New Year’s Eve at nine o’clock was the Chinese restaurant we had avoided the night before. We could get mediocre Chinese in Bulgaria, we had figured. The restaurant gave us a great dinner, though. It was full of Americans, Frenchmen, and Germans, also surprised that Greeks don’t go out for dinner on New Year’s Eve. We shared everything, in that great Chinese restaurant tradition, and split the bill in three down the middle.

Just before midnight, we hurried to the center of town where, in front of a building that looked just like the courthouse from Back to the Future, most of the city had gathered to set off fireworks, apparently believing that the island’s most beautiful harbor was not the place to do that kind of thing. In the middle of the crowd was a large, smoke-filled center where kids set off sparklers and adults launched the rockets. Never has a celebration seemed so close to my image of war. We stood at a good distance and watched several sparks and flames singe the people in the inner circle.

After the show of Crete’s military capabilities, we went back to the harbor and visited some clubs where we ran into, literally, boatloads of American sailors. There’s a base near Hania, and they come in to celebrate the holidays whenever they get the chance. They seemed pretty well-behaved, or—to put it another way—I didn’t see any reason for that hotel owner to give us a grilling about our motives for being in town. But sailors, I imagine, will be sailors.

New Years Day, we slept in, left our envelope with a receptionist, and put our bags in a small loft on the first floor since our boat would not leave for Athens until that night. We hadn’t sat in a café for five minutes, however, when the rain began to fall. We spent the day hustling from one cup of coffee to another, grabbing lunch along the way. Towards the evening, the weather settled and we walked around town before catching our ferry.

Although the ferry stunk of the problems of rough seas, the entire trip to Crete was certainly something to remember. We never would have visited Hania without a certain sense of adventure and the closing of the route to Santorini. We all left glad we’d taken the chance.

Posted by Rob at January 9, 2004 07:16 PM