Greece Day 16 & 17: Crete to Athens

On Tuesday we traveled from Heraklion to Athens.  A pleasant flight, and efficient Uber transfers along the way.

Leaving our bags at our guest house, we headed directly to the Acropolis Museum, which is beautiful, spacious and well designed. Given that we had only two hours before it closed, we managed to see all of the highlights with some time left for some closer attention to some other exhibits. It helped that the museum guide conveniently featured the most significant pieces.  Especially interesting were the pediments of the Parthenon. The amazing marble sculptures were significantly damaged over the centuries - some of the damage was intentional for religious, cultural, or pecuniary reasons, some was caused by fires, wars, and weather and some were removed  by Lord Elgin and others who took them because they could. Fortunately one enterprising man in the late 1700’s made impressions of the carvings which made it possible to recreate them so we can now have a good idea of what they looked like.  Overall, the museum was Amazing, and we could have spent a lot more time there.  

The other interesting and unique feature of the museum was that it was built over the excavations of ruins from the 5th and 6th century BC city. Tthere were several large homes. We could see the various rooms in the homes as well as the canals built for water and sewage systems. 

We took many pictures, but decided to include the link below rather than our own photos because we couldn’t choose just a few! 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

After the museum, we enjoyed a traditional Greek lamb dinner at a taverna nearby. It was very cool to be having dinner with the Acropolis looming on the hill above. 

Today, Wednesday, after spending some time packing and sorting our luggage, we took the metro to the Museum of Cycladic Art. The Museum is small and very well curated. The exhibits traced history and art in the Aegean, primarily the Cyclades - a group of central Greek islands between mainland Greece and Turkey - as well as Crete and Cyprus from the early Bronze Age to the Christian Era, from about 3500 BC to about 6OO AD. After all of our travels and learning about this period in Athens, the Peloponnes and Crete, this museum did a great job of putting the artifacts and history in context.

The Wikipedia page gives a history and overview of the most important works.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goulandris_Museum_of_Cycladic_Art

Having had a perfect Vietnamese dinner, we are ready for the next adventure in Jordan and Egypt. 

Greece Day 14 & 15: Return to Heraklion & Museums

Yesterday was primarily a travel day - returning to Heraklion from Chania. We had a few hours in the morning, so we explored a few more historical sites and enjoyed wandering through the charming narrow streets of the old town. 

 Lighthouse in Chania

We stopped in a cool gift shop that was designed by our guide’s brother in law.  In addition to a lot of interesting products, the floor of the shop was glass over the walls of a 17th century church.

 

We walked along the Byzantine walls we explored last night, and then turned left to view the Minoan ruins further up the hill.  There was not a lot to see, basically a few stone foundations, but we fulfilled our goal of seeing as many Minoan ruins as possible. These site demonstrated graphically the many layers of earlier civilizations that lay under our feet. 

With the time we had left before our departure, we walked around in the old town and visited the Firka Fortress which is strategically located across from the lighthouse. We could not go into it, but our walk around part of it indicated that it is huge. It was a beautiful morning, and we enjoyed walking around the narrow old Venetian era streets, stopping at interesting shops and talking with the owners who were often the creators of many of the products. 

Below : charming streets and alleys  

The drive back to Heraklion was uneventful.  We enjoyed the beautiful scenery along the coastal road, with many views of the sea, the mountains and miles of olive groves. Since we were less focused on historical sites, we could appreciate more of the natural beauty of the island.

We checked in to our new hotel, centrally located near the center of the pedestrian area, and went out to explore.  We did some shopping, and then sat in a cafe drinking tea, eating Bougatsa (Cretan philo and cream pastry), and people watching.

Today (Monday) we got busy seeing the last Cretan sites on our list.

High on our list was returning to the Archaeology museum where we spent about two hours, revisiting our favorites from our first visit mostly from the sites we had been to, noticing more items than we had seen earlier and discovering a whole wing we missed before.  Some of the Minoan sites we visited were later occupied by classical Greek, Roman, Venetian and Ottoman cultures as well - so we enjoyed the artifacts from different epochs found at the same location.

Minoan genealogy charts showing the royal family. The kings who ruled the various Minoan cities were related to each other, which reduced rivalry.

We returned to the hotel and let our backs recover for half an hour, then walked to the History of Crete Museum to learn about the Battle of Crete in WWII.  We have learned a lot of lesser known WWII history on this trip, and knew that Crete had a story to tell. The focus of Crete’s story is the strong resistance the local people mounted for over four years. Most of the resistance groups were small, often family centered, and located in isolated bases in the mountains, doing what they could stop the Germans, often with British assistance. 

The museum also had an interesting exhibit about Cretan Folklife. The exhibits had information about the important aspects of daily life with clothing and food people created and used at weddings, funerals, births, planting, harvesting and saints days.  They had remarkable textile examples, including hand made lace, and a loom. 

Holiday bread

Musical instruments- music and dancing were and important part of village life.

We finished in the museum just in time to walk down to the Venetian Koules Fort in the harbor before it closed at 3:30.  We only had 25 minutes to explore - but that was enough to see the huge store rooms downstairs - as well as the spectacular view from the top.

Needing some respite, we made our way back to the center of town (the lion fountain) for more tea and Bougatsa. 

Then spent a quiet evening preparing for our next adventure.