Our Travel Journal: Island Hopping 2024: Crete, The Venetian Fort at Reythemno, Carl the Greek

What is it about an island? If I were visiting a city, I would be perfectly content to limit my explorations to a 15 square block area. For example, in Boston, I’d be satisfied just visiting the North End for a week. But, put me on an island and I have an unquenchable thirst to explore every square inch of it, from end to end. Today we headed out to Chania on Crete’s Northwestern side. The trip over, through evermore spectacular mountains was both breathtaking and, at times, breathless. During this drive I asked Sandy how she could succinctly describe Crete? Without a moment’s hesitation she replied, “Mountainy, Olive-y, Long-Wordy and Mediterranean-y. Sandy has never been one for a loss of words even when the situation calls for making them up. But she was perfectly correct. She did boil Crete down to its purest essence.

Mountain-y

Olive-y

Big Wordy

Mediterranean-y

Here, Mountain-y and Olive-y

Not to mention the mountain town-y

Church-y

Coming out of the mountains on the North side of the Island we immediately came upon Crete’s third largest town, Rethymno. From up on the mountain we could see the old Venetian Fort standing proudly on the edge of the Sea (on the North side of the island it is called the Cretan Sea) and made a spur of the moment decision to go see it. Negotiating the narrow medieval streets of Rethymno we worked our way over to the fort, hiked up the hill to the main gate and went in. The city-state of Venice had acquired Reythemno in 1204, but almost immediately its rival city-state Genoa took possession and held it for several decades. When the Venetians finally returned they built the fort to protect their possession. With this fort and others like it around the island they held Crete for four and a half centuries.

The formidable approach to the Venetian fort

Ruins inside the fort

Paths inside the fort

A small Orthodox Church inside the fort

Passage ways and storage rooms

Unexpected to see cactus and snowcapped mountains in the middle of the Mediterranean

Now an event center, formally a Ottoman Mosque, before that a Byzantine Church

From on top of the walls they could see those pesky Genoans coming from any direction

Zorba the Greek! Anthony Quinn! Anyone my age is familiar with this masterpiece movie, and specifically Zorba’s dance scene on the beach. Sandy and I drove out to the little beach town of Stavros. It was upon this town’s beach that the scene was filmed. But for the film, this would not be a particularly noteworthy beach, but with the film, Crete has none better. Sandy found the score from the movie’s soundtrack and played it on her iPhone while we walked along the abandoned beach. One thing led to another and soon enough I was “Carl the Greek”. With the afternoon waning and Sandy as my audience , I, like Zorba, did my Greek dance, and I, like him, felt the endless expanse of the sea and permanence of the sand beneath my feet. In that fleeting moment, I, like Zorba, was embodying the soul of Crete itself – wild, untamed, and utterly irresistible. Well, that is how it was playing out in my mind anyway.