Menu board

Konaki Restaurant by the old harbour was sporting this mantinada:

"What you are going to eat, my friend,
In the company of the Lyre,
Staka and Wedding pilaf rice
Which is the Greek Viagra."

(Please excuse me for the out of focus photo)

Sunset at the harbour

Sunset at the harbour, after two days of rainfall.

Coffee at Koum Kapi

This was a very relaxing way to spend a cold Sunday afternoon: in a cafe, in an inner-city suburb of Chania by the sea...



... with a great view of the eastern bulwark which once formed part of the fortifications of the Venetian town of Hania.



Read more about Koum Kapi.

The old wall

I often talk about the old town, the old port, the old wall of Hania, but I've never really shown you a photo of what the old wall actually looks like. The town centre was once enclosed within a square wall, surrounded by a moat. Some parts of the wall survive more or less intact, other parts are left in crumbling ruins, while the moat, which was never actually used as it was intended, has often been used as a car park, a football pitch, or a rubbish dump.

(The eastern side, which houses an open-air theatre; the western side, looking from the top of the wall down onto the moat, also bordered by the hill where the town was built)

(restoring the wall)

Work started about a year ago to restore the wall to its former glory. Houses that were built on the foundations of the wall, including an old hotel, were torn down to make way for its restoration. The wall represents tangible evidence of the history of the town. It was built in the 16th century by the Venetians who conquered Crete.

Answer to yesterday's quiz: donkey dung.

ABC Wednesday: H for hotel

It's ABC Wednesday again, and H is for hotel.

The most popular hotels in the central town of Hania, a Mediterranean summer resort town in the biggest Greek island, are the ones that go by the name of 'pension', a French term used for small rooms in the style of the English bed and breakfast.

All the three-story buildings seen around the port are hotels, while the ground floor operates as some kind of business associated with the tourist trade, eg cafe, bar, restaurant, souvenir shop.

Here's a sampling of the more picturesque, quainter hotels lining the narrow streets in the old town by the old port.

What I like most about them is their names, which usually show the foreign influences. Casa del Amore, Castello and Villa Venezia clearly attest to the Venetian origins of the town, while Lena and Irini are probably the Greek names of former or present owners. Soultana (the name of a restaurant) comes from the 'sultan', a Turkish chief; the Ottomans (Turks) dwelled in the town for four centuries.

There are also other more traditional styles of hotels with large dining areas and swimming pools, but not in the old town, as the streets are too narrow; they're found outside the ancient walls of the old town in the more modern parts of Hania. Not as picturesque, but probably more functional.

ABC Wednesday: C for Carriage

It's ABC Wednesday again, and C is for cart or carriage, in the lovely town of Hania which is usually written as Chania.

Everyone loves going for a ride in one of these old-fashioned carriages. These ones are heading towards the old harbour; as relics of older times, they suit the mood of the lovely port lined with the many little cafe bars. They are used mainly by tourists (at 20 euro for a short ride, the price is a bit steep), and they are also hired for weddings. The town is too small and the roads are too narrow for open-top tourist buses, but these are prettier and will stay in your memory for much longer.

If you're wondering what the Christmas lights are doing in the picture (another 'C' word) on a warm summer's day, don't worry: we don't light them until Christmas time; it's just easier to leave them hanging there rather than taking them down and putting them up every year...

Although the name of the town of Hania is most often written with a 'C' ('Chania'), the 'C' is never pronounced. To pronounce the name of the city correctly when you see it written as 'Chania', pretend it's not there, and say 'Hania' instead. That's why I call my blog 'One day in Hania'.

The ship

Remember that night view of the ship in port, where you had to guess just where the ferry boat might be in all that darkness? Here's a photo taken from the same position of the same ship in all its glory in daylight. This view has been snapped in close-up from the balcony overlooking our garden.

SkyWatch Friday: Sunrise over the old harbour

Sometimes you can't take the photo you want to take as beautiful as you want it to be. This shot comes from the webcam overlooking the beautiful harbour (courtesy of Leandros). The former mosque is right below the sun, which has just risen in this early morning shot.

Night view

This is the view I get from the balcony of my children's bedroom. Can you see the ship at Souda Bay??? Send me a note and tell me where it is. Use the colours and sizes of the lights to pinpoint the position exactly.

Answer provided on tomorrow's post!

The ferry boat

This is one in the monopoly fleet of ferry boats that take us to Pireas Harbour in Athens, when and if we choose to go there, which is unavoidable at many points in the life of a Cretan, sometimes for medical reasons, other times just to escape small-town living. The Ariadne is the latest addition to the ANEK Lines fleet. The boat (one of a few used on this route) leaves from Souda Bay, about 5km eastwards out of town, in the evening at 9pm, and arrives in the early hours of the next day (about 6pm). When it's not being used as the main link between Athens and Hania, it acts as a cruise boat, or it's used in some of the more 'luxurious' routes for Greek tourism, linking Greece to Italy.

Souvenirs

Souvenirs, anyone?

The ceramics trade in my town has always played an important role in the tourist trade. These ceramics are being sold at the old port, the most significant tourist site in my town. I live close to a tourist beach which is lined with ceramics shops, but it could also be called a dying trade because the kilns are not worth operating these days, and are closing down. This could only mean that we are probably going to be importing a lot of our tourists' souvenirs, probably from China - where else?

The sea

The Mediterranean sea is sometimes described as a velvet carpet sparkling with diamonds. Can you see the fish? This photo was taken at the old port near the marina.

The internet is not working in my area at the moment - forgive me for the briefness of my commentary.

The city wall

Once upon a time, in the bad old days of pirates and invading armies, the Venetian citizens of Hania, Crete, decided to build a wall around the three sides of the coastal town around 1350 AD to defend themselves against invaders. The gates of the city were locked at a certain hour every evening to prevent rebels from entering the town and destroying it or taking it over. Most of the wall has now been torn down; just a few crumbling pieces remain on the eastern side (in the above photo); there is an open-air theatre in operation in the summer in this area. The remaining parts of the western side are in slightly better shape, but the main wall in front of the town has gone.

The grassy area in front was supposedly a moat that ran around the wall to protect it even further, but no water ever actually filled it, according to historical records.

Nice view

For some people, choosing a place to live is all about what kind of view they have from their house. I was very lucky in that I had a 'high' view from most places I lived in. When I lived in Mt Victoria (Wellington, New Zealand), I could see all the hills of Kelburn and the Aro Valley suburbs, with the colourful cute little box houses. The dome of the Greek Orthodox Church was also visible from my bedroom, and even though I was half hour's walk from the Victoria University library, I knew which floors were still open for late night study.

Now where I live in Hania, despite the dirty grey terrace of an unfinished house just down the road, every day I can see when the ferry boat from Athens has come into Souda Bay, and I can play a game with the children by asking them if they can see it moving away from the port at night. Eventually, they'll be able to name the ship that is in port, as I can now - this one is the ANEK Lines ELEFTHERIOS VENIZELOS, a former cruise ship which has been superseded by newer ships. Even at night, it is visible, with a long row of lights, so you can track it for a good fifteen minutes as it starts moving away from the harbour and into the dark sea. Maybe this is why the suburb that I live in is called Kalithea (= nice view), Vamvakopoulo.

Hania by night

Here's Hania's waterfront on a warm evening, which turned everyone out onto the Old Port (the former mosque is to the left). This is just what the little laughing olive tree wanted to do when she visited me - sit at a outdoor cafe bar, sipping martinis all night, and people-watching...

Hania for sale

The ROOMS sign is, of course, intended for tourists, while the blue sign is what all street signs in our town (and indeed all over Greece) look like: ODOS = street, which always goes in front of the name of the street. So if you live in Brown Street, in Greece, you'd say Street Brown.

I'm sorry, but I wish these kinds of shops would just stop popping up like mushrooms all over my town. This one is found on a side street near the Old Harbour (with a few other teeny weeny pristine clean white offices in the same street plying the same trade), and it's just screaming out to everyone that everything in Hania is for sale, and at a high price, just when locals cannot afford to provide themselves with decent medical care or a two-week holiday abroad, even though Northern Europeans come to Hania on dirt-cheap mass-tourism package holidays.

In my opinion, these offices are a new form of prostitution - they're developing land which was once used to grow orange or olive trees, or selling old delapidated village houses in need of a lot of money to be renovated, to mainly Northern Europeans whose buying power is much greater than the locals', tricking them into selling their ancestral properties to foreigners who view them as a cheap retirement hobby, while regarding the locals as citizens of the their world.

The former mosque

The former Turkish mosque sits by the edge of the old port next to the cafes in Hania, as though it had always been there. It used to be a tourist information office, but it's now used for exhibitions and other events right throughout the year, especially during the tourist season; it's only just past all the outdoor restaurants, tavernas, takeaway bars and cafes in the old part of town.

What's a mosque doing in a central position on a Greek port? Thankfully, it has never been in too bad a state of repair, nor has it ever been under threat of demolition. It just sits there reminding the locals of the history of their town, which has changed hands from ancient times, once ruled by the Romans, who were defeated by the Arabs, who were then thrown out of Hania by the Byzantines, who lost power to the Venetians, who were afraid of the Turks invading them, forcing them to build a wall right round the city. The Turks still managed to sneak in, and it was during their time here that they built this magnificent building that decorates the port. They were finally cast out of the town only just over a hundred years ago, after which the island of Crete became part of the Greek state.

To see exactly where the old mosque is situated and what the weather is like in Hania, click here. I hope you like what you see.

Sunrise

Yesterday's sunrise at 7.15am (daylight saving time).

Dawn descends on the town, as seen from my house.

To the right, you can see the harbour at Souda Bay, the main ferry port.