Crete: Chania “with an elephant eye”

Some cities capture your heart.  It’s hard to write about Chania (or Hania, whichever spelling you prefer) as we’ve been to this beautiful Cretan town so many times. And I know I’ve written too much but there’s still so much more…

If you yearn to drift off to sleep with just the quiet sound of the little waves lapping against the shore, then Chania might not be the perfect vacation place.  But it’s more than a vacation place to us; we love its energy, color, culture, cuisine and beauty. And our son studied here for nearly nine years at the Polytechic University, living in a 17^th c. Venetian stone house among the rhythms of the Topanas area of the palia poli (old town). Besides the summer, we have also visited him during November storms with the sea swirling around the faros (lighthouse) and the waves tumbling over the promenade. We’ve seen Hania in the springtime with the backdrop of the snowy lefka ori (white mountains), when hotels and restaurants start their renovations thinking of the busy summer tourist season ahead, from May through September and even into October.

The “ability to see all things as if for the first time and greet them, to see all things as if for the last time and bid them farewell.” That’s how Kazantzakis in Report to Greco describes what he calls the elephant eye. So it is with Chania, to try and use the elephant eye, to see it freshly each time we visit.  Kind of like that song we used to sing in Brownies (!) “make new friends but keep the old, some are silver and the other gold.”  One of the old gold friends is kyrios Giorgos who, along with his wife Eleni, returned from New York  to their home village outside Chania around 20 years ago to run the pension “Casa dell’Amore,” or “Amore rooms” where we always stay. Next door to our son’s former place, at the corner of Aggelou and Theotocopoulou streets (named for Domenicos Theotocopoulos or El Greco), it is one of the most photographed places of the old town.

K. Giorgos, along with many small pension and hotel owners, the backbone of Chania’s tourism, are in fact feeling the Airbnb effect, and supply is actually outrunning demand in the old town. 

As it is with people, the same with restaurants.  We return to the ones we know and love, like Kalderimi on Theotocopoulou, with the exquisite care it takes with its gourmet food, such as imam byaldi, a classic middle eastern dish where eggplants are stuffed with fresh tomato and lots of onions (and olive oil) and topped with feta or another cheese. (The meaning in Turkish “the imam fainted,” was given, as legend says, either because he fainted with happiness to taste the new dish his wife prepared, or from shock when he learned how much oil she used in preparing it.) 

The owner, another Giorgos, this time gave us not the usual kerasma (treat at end of meal) but something special. More than the usual watermelon or a little sweet with a tiny bottle of raki, Giorgos fixed up a Cretan delicacy he made, “sfakianopita” which is a pita (or pancake) with the white crumbly Cretan cheese mizithra, served with honey.  A wonderful blend of savory and sweet.

The raki is indeed a lovely gesture that all the restaurants bring at the end of a meal, but I find it’s a little hard to deal with after drinking wine…

Time to try something unfamiliar too.  Chania is known for its high quality restaurants, and a great place to eat is the area of Splantzia (the traditional Turkish quarter), away from the Venetian harbour, which can be a bit touristy and high sell (“Come in we have a special table for you…”)  A new discovery on this trip was the “Well of the Turk” whose cooking is a mix of Turkish, Cretan and Moroccan.  The menu stresses that they use no microwave cooking and only biological products.  

Wander a little in Splantzia, and you’ll find yourself in the main square. You look up at the church, wait a moment, have you had too much raki?  You see a bell tower on one side, on the other a minaret.  It’s true, Agios Nikolaos was first a church, then a mosque from Ottoman times, with both a campanile and a minaret.  After the Ottomans left, it was made into a church again. 

Churches used as mosques and vice versa is common in this part of the world, but what was more unusual was when a 14^th century church was given to the local Jewish population in the 1600’s in the Evraiki (Jewish area) and made into a synagogue.  The synagogue, bombed during WWII and abandoned, was restored 20 years ago with great care and today this beautiful site is both a religious and cultural center in the town. Another thread in Chania’s extraordinary multicultural tapestry.

Should we go back to food again? Another food discovery this time was at the “Agora,” the closed market, built in 1913 when Crete united with the rest of Greece. It’s not only a great place to stroll around in and shop for touristy stuff like olive oil soaps, magnets and beach towels, Cretan products like olives and Cretan-made cheese, bakeries to buy pitas and calzounia, little pastries stuffed with cheese or spinach, but it also has tiny restaurants like in the market in Athens, and like the old traditional Greek restaurants, where you went in the kitchen and saw what was cooked for the day.  We discover Michaelis’ place, whose mother kyria Maria cooks – gemista (stuffed tomatoes & peppers), gavros (tiny fried fish), soupies with horta (cuttlefish with wild greens) to name a few of what we sampled. We take the food out to eat later on our balcony on Theotocopoulou, sea at one end, lefka ori mountains at the other. Nothing gourmet, just fresh and delicious. 

You can’t walk around the promenade without hearing all kinds of music from the bars (Fagotto on Aggelou is one of the few that has jazz) and restaurants, many of which have a bouzouki and guitar.  But no matter where we went, we always ended up at Ta Chalkina listening to the foot stamping Cretan lauto and lyra they had every night.  Always packed inside and out, besides a listen, it’s worth a look. Where else can you see waiters with the ability to balance several main dishes, salads, and about 20 glasses of beer on a tray holding it with three fingers and running to tables.

This year we actually got our fill of pentozali and malevizioti, (two of the Cretan dances where the men do their amazing kicks) and the women in their demure aprons twirl around and around, holding their hands out like Minoan goddesses.   These dances do indeed have their origins in Minoan Crete.

Music and dance performances were held every night at the annual agricultural product festival in Chania.  Known as “Agrotiki Avgoustos” this is when farmers come to the city to sell wine, honey, and other products, also pitas, calzounia. You can sample all kinds of cheeses, and reach into baskets of pasteli with almond, cranberry or walnut. Which one to buy, you can’t decide, they’re all wonderful. 

As with every vacation place, people gather to watch the sunset and its fiery colors.

As we do every time, we take a walk  at dusk along the ramparts toward the faros.  It’s a favorite activity, to watch and feel the open sea, and watch the sky around the lighthouse change color. 

The faros, subject of infinite sunset photos. The iconic symbol of Chania. Started by the Venetians in 1570, it was actually restored by the Egyptians in the 19^th century.  Ok, a little history here. As with Rhodes, with the Knights leaving their mark more than other invaders, here it’s the Venetians who gave the town its present look, who built the harbour in the 1300’s, who gave the name “La Canea” which became Chania.  

As always, the Venetians put their efforts into walls and fortifications but also dockyards, known as neoria (as of course the Venetians were great seafarers). You can see them along the harbour where they repaired and  built their ships.  

The “anatoliki tafros”(eastern moat) theatre used for music dance and theatre performances is the easternmost wall of the old town. You can’t miss the Byzantine walls too along Sifakas Street (the place to buy your Cretan knives). Along Karnevaro, the main corso during the Venetian era, if you like excavations, there are plenty of different eras of the history of Chania, including even late Minoan ruins (about 1,500 b.c.). The Minoans settled on the hill in back of the Kiotsouk Hassan Mosque at the harbor, but they weren’t the first residents; there were already settlers from Neolithic times.

You can hear the purring of Chania cats everywhere waiting patiently for you as you eat dinner, lolling in doorways, keeping an eye on you.

When we get tired of Nea Chora beach (a 10 to 15 minute walk from Theotocopoulou), an area full of fish tavernas enticing you with displays of fresh octopus drying in the sun, we usually rent a car one or two days to go to other beaches, mostly on the southern coast.

This year from a kind of inertia, and because the sea was unusually calm along the northern coast, we stay put in Chania, just going one day to Stavros beach on Akrotiri, where much of “Zorba the Greek” was filmed. The scenery is gorgeous, that imposing mountain where Zorba’s logging project fell apart in the film. As there’s no wind the day we go, the sea is like a shimmery emerald green lake or pool. But “Zorba’s Beach” as they call it now, sad to say has become a bit crass and touristy and the one umbrella concession charges you 20 euros for 2 sunbeds & an umbrella. Exorbitant! Exploitative! But what can you do, you’re stuck, no shade not even a shrub, you have to bring your own umbrella or you have to pay… 

I can’t resist putting in this photo of “Kedrodasos” {Cedar forest] near Elafonissi from last summer. My son always knows out-of-the-way beaches and if you ask how to get there, it’s always “ make a left turn when the vineyards start, drive a little ways, and then you walk down a little till you get to the sea.”  What he fails to mention is that the drive is always a dirt road with swirls of dust that goes on for kilometres past vineyards, olive trees, goats and chickens and after you finally park the car, having worried about the tires, then you have a 45 minute walk up and down hills, pulling branches out of your way until you finally reach steps that plunge you down to the sea.  Oh but what a sea … 

In Chania, the rhythms go on in this city of history, culture and beauty and it’s a little hard to resist them and concentrate, especially if you’re a student. (By the way, our son eventually did graduate and get his engineering degree). Well, our visit is nearly over for this year, we’ve had our “dose,” it’s time to say goodbye, as if it’s for the last time, to take it all in with the elephant eye. “As if” but not in reality. We say farewell, but not convincingly, as we’re already planning the visit for next summer.