Arkadi Monastery, Crete’s Mountainous Interior, and Agios Nikolaos

Wednesday, May 15

We had one more day in Crete and wanted to get a taste of some terrain and sights that differ from the port cities we’ve seen so far.  Our first stop was the Arkadi Monastery, a 45 minute drive into the interior on winding roads that took us well above the coastal plain.  The monastery holds a revered place in the religious and national history of Crete – and Greece.  Founded in the 16^th century, it was an important fortified religious center, housing a scriptorium, workshops, a community of monks, and a notable katholikon.  Though the monastery was allowed certain privileges during the centuries of Ottoman rule, the regime was an oppressive one and there was widespread resistance, as well as a movement to unite Crete with Greece.  In 1866, a massive Ottoman force arrived to crush revolts on the island and hundreds of Cretans took sanctuary in the monastery.The Turks laid siege to the monastery complex in bloody, hand-to-hand combat during which hundreds of women and children barricaded themselves with the Abbott in a building used for gunpowder storage.  With their soldier husbands and fathers dead throughout the complex, their trapped families chose to ignite the gunpowder rather than surrender.  With the exception of one surviving young girl, they all perished – along with their attackers.  The monastery is a serene place today, and is a popular destination for visitors, despite its fairly remote location; there were several busloads of tourists there while we visited.

We planned to venture further into and up the mountains of Crete to visit a couple of villages on the beautiful (we’d read) Lasithi Plateau, but eventually decided against that.  The roads were narrow, impossible to travel safely at the supposed speed limit and very indirect, and we realized we’d ultimately spend far too much time getting to destinations that might not be worth all that time.  Eventually, we reconnected with the coastal highway near Heraklion and headed off to see a bit of eastern Crete.  

We threaded our way on a very narrow and winding road (no guard rails)  past new “luxury villas” perched on the slopes above Plaka, a small resort community facing the island of Spinalonga.  We had our lunch along the shore, in view of the island, which has the requisite Venetian fortress and history of Ottoman occupation, but is most notorious for its period as a leper colony in the first half of the 20^th century.  There were people swimming in the beach nearby during one of the sunny portions of this mixed-sun-and-clouds day.  

From Plaka, we drove south through a series of beach resort towns to Elounda, which was just jammed with people, cars, and shops selling all sorts of tourist schlock – too much of all of the above to consider stopping, even if we could have found a place to park.  

A bit farther on, we came to Aigos Nikolaos, where we did leave the car in a lot and join the many others who were enjoying the port and the pedestrian shopping lanes.  We walked around the small lake, which is connected to the port by a narrow channel, and is ringed by cafes and shops.  (It’s also, according to legend, bottomless and was a swimming hole for Athena and Apollo!)  As we were walking, a family group asked if Tom would take their picture.  We chatted a bit, discovered that they were Polish and the father a veterinarian, so Tom told him about his cousin a Polish vet, whom we’d visited last fall.  They loved it!

We left Crete’s holiday makers behind and headed back to the port of Heraklion, where we were able to just leave the rental car with the keys under the mat in a lot right at our pier, board our ship at 6:00, have our happy hour and dinner, enjoy a lovely sunset behind the Venetian fortress,   and wait for our 9:00 departure for Athens.  

Now that we’ll be relying on public transportation for the last few days of this vacation, I (as a passenger only, and totally unbiased – if occasionally freaked out – observer) wanted to make a few observations about driving in Greece.  There don’t seem to be any actual rules of the road; everything seems to be pretty much do as you please.  The main “highways,” – mostly two-lane roads – have stripes in the middle that seem to perform no function other than to provide periodic employment for road painting crews.  Solid double lines are routinely crossed as drivers pass by creating a middle lane – out of two! – while other drivers in both directions move right.  (This is reminiscent of the road “system” we encountered in the Baltics last fall.)  Especially in the cities and towns, motor scooter drivers cruise into intersections with impunity, regardless of oncoming cross traffic.  “No Parking” signs are routinely ignored, as are those familiar red octagons with white letters – the “STOP-tional” signs.  We’ve read that Crete drivers have more accidents than those in the rest of Greece, and all of the aforementioned situations were especially notable on the island.  It’s always a relief to turn in a rental car without (great) mishap – never more than here.

On to the Athens Metro!