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‘Honeymoon’On Saturday morning, while I was visiting the naval museum (and not taking any pictures), Dorothea was again wandering the Old Town. She revisited the top of Zambéliou street and this time got a picture that shows the whole front of this charmingly colorful house. -
TerraceA little nook near the Renieri arch at the top of Zambéliou. -
A family of weaversThis woman represents the third generation of her family to keep the shop where Dorothea met her. They weave most of the fabrics on sale there—wool, linen, and cotton—and also do some embroidery. -
Maintaining a traditionOne of the two looms that make the shop a workplace as well as a salesroom. Much of the weaving is done in traditional Cretan patterns. -
Folk embroideryTraditional patterns. Dorothea was reminded by some of the things she saw in the shop of work that her grandmother did as a girl in Greece and brought with her to America. -
Restaurant in waitingPassing this empty restaurant, Dorothea was struck by the pattern of tables, chairs, and umbrellas. -
Narrow street sceneLooking up a quiet back street, or almost-street. -
Looking out of the harborOn our way to the Minoan ship, we walked around the Outer Harbor. This is how the harbor mouth looks from the bottom of the curve. -
Mosque and vesselWe were coming around toward the Mosque of the Janissaries. A sightseeing boat was moored alongside, waiting for passengers. -
Mosque of the JanissariesA closer look at the mosque by itself, which is now used by the city as an exhibition space. The large dome is a concrete reconstruction of the original one. -
VesselHere's the shore side of the sightseeing boat. No passengers were boarding as we came by, but the sign says the next trip was scheduled for 2:30pm, and that was almost two hours off. -
MihrabThe Mosque of the Janissaries, like all mosques, has a niche called the mihrab located so as to indicate the direction of Mecca, so that worshippers can face in that direction when they pray. Now that Chaniá has no significant Muslim population, the mosque is used for exhibitions rather than prayer. -
MemorialMost of the historic buildings on the mound of Kastélli were destroyed by the bombing that accompanied the German invasion in 1941. The city of Chaniá has left this site at the bottom of the hill unrepaired to commemorate the buildings, history, and people that were lost at that time. -
The MinoaThis replica of an ancient Minoan ship was carefully constructed based on a few paintings that have survived the three and a half millennia since the collapse of that Bronze Age culture. The builders did research on the materials and techniques most likely to have been used back then, and relied as little as practicable on modern substitutes. However, they used plenty of computer simulations in the planning and building.
The ship has been proven seaworthy, and was even sailed and rowed from Crete to Piraeus around the time of the 2004 Olympics. Housed in one of Chaniá’s surviving Venetian arsenali, which were built to shelter war-galleys from the elements, the ship is mounted on a trailer, ready for future launchings. -
Ship modelThis quarter-size model was built first, using, as far as possible the same materials and techniques that would go into building the ship. The builders hoped to test the validity of their ideas on what the Minoa should be made of and how it should be made—and also, of course, to find out whether their plans and hypotheses were reasonable or crazy. -
Another view of the modelThis is a closer look at the model, taken from the stern. You can see in the details how closely it corresponds to the full-sized Minoa. It's hard to tell which is which in a photo, except by comparison with surrounding objects. For instance, Dorothea, who was standing at the far end when I took this picture. It’s her shoulder (in a light green blouse) that you can see at the upper right in the angle between the sail and the gunwale. -
Ship's sternThis is the stern of the actual Minoa, not the model. One newly introduced detail is a backwards-looking pelican ornament on the end of the cypress keel. The keel is a single piece, made from the trunk of a cypress tree, that curves from stem to stern and forms both. It defines the ship’s shape in the vertical dimension, while two massive side beams define it in the horizontal dimension by curving around the two sides. They were made from a single cypress trunk that was split with each piece then carved so that its cross-section was round. You can see the starboard side beam in this picture; a steering oar is lashed to it. -
On deckNot exactly what us landlubbers think of as a deck. The rowers’ seats are on a lower level, and the runway down the middle is for the sailors who work the ropes that control the sail and the steering oars—not, one hopes, for the fat bald guy with the whip so beloved of present-day cartoonists. The port side steering oar shows in the lower left corner, and you can see that it provides plenty of places to fasten ropes. (My nautical vocabulary is too poverty-stricken to provide the proper name for these; I'm thankful that I can even remember port and starboard.) -
Captain's quarters?Not exactly five-star accommodations, but at least he got to sit in the shade. As far as I could see, there's no space for a stateroom down below. -
The Inner HarborThe seawall protects the inner harbor from rough water, so that's where most of the boats tie up. At the end you can see two of the three Venetian arsenali that survive there, but the one where we saw the Minoan ship exhibit is out of sight behind the hotel at the right. -
SupervisionMeals eaten outdoors are seldom without four-footed observers. We were careful not to feed them, assuming that Greek restaurateurs would object to that as much as Americans, but one told us he liked the stray dog that showed up regularly. I have to admit that the begging animals we saw were always silent (or at least soft-voiced) and well mannered, and never too persistent. (About the caption title: a supervisor, at least etymologically, is one who looks down on you from above. That's what this kitty was doing as we left, though while we ate she had put in some time mewing vainly at our feet.) -
The Karnáyio tavernaWhere we ate lunch. The name means 'shipyard,' which it (or at least the place where it stands) used to be. It's a short distance back from the Inner Harbor, up against the Kastélli bluff, the ramparts of which you can see at the right. -
The lighthouse at nightThis was taken Saturday night as we were on the way back from dinner. We weren't exactly set up for night photography, but it was a part of the experience that I didn't want to omit just because the picture wasn't perfect. -
The mosque at nightMore atmospherics: the Mosque of the Janissaries was lit up too. -
In the Archaeological MuseumThe Venetian church of Santo Francesco, converted to a mosque by the Turks, has now become a museum. This is the Roman section: the two mosaic floors in the foreground once belonged to local Roman villas, and the sculpture pieces in the picture date from the same period. -
Kalderími restaurantThe little restaurant across the street, photographed from our balcony (between mealtimes). Its name, Kalderími, is probably Turkish in origin and means something like ‘cart track’ or ‘unpaved road’—the owner, who is from the countryside, wanted to evoke rural associations. As you can see, the tables are small and there aren’t very many. Sunday night (like every night we spent in Chaniá), they were all occupied, so we dined in splendid isolation at a table the owner set up for us just around the corner at the top of Ángelou street.