Crete at Dawn

Today Kathy and I didn't wait for breakfast; instead we headed out before the sun came up to walk the 1.5 KM breakwater surrounding Chania harbor, out to the lighthouse. Only delivery men were on the street. There was one solitary fisherman on the breakwater itself. Other than that, we were alone. We got there just as the sun was coming up on the lighthouse.

On the way back we walked past inner Venetian harbor that has mostly pleasure and charter boats. The fishing boats are in the harbor at the other end of town. We walked down there yesterday. 

As we walked back to breakfast, a few boats were leaving the harbor, but the streets were still pretty deserted. There were people opening up cafes, but the cafes with customers were filled with Greeks, not tourists. 

The mosque in the center of town was covered with pigeons being fed by the city. I wonder if they put birth-control medication in the bird-seed like they do at St. Marks in Venice?

We both had a good appetite by the time we got back to our hotel. The large Greek breakfast was almost (not quite) more than we could eat. This was the first course. Sitting in the courtyard was so beautiful and relaxing.

Today was museum day, so after breakfast we headed over to the Archaeological Museum which has its collections in two different restored churches. 

Along the way we peeked into the Church of Agios Nikolaos, a Venetian-era church with both a bell tower and a minaret. The minaret was added when it was once converted to a mosque (like many Greek churches) under Ottoman rule. The church is right around the corner from our hotel, but it's hard to get far enough away from it to take a good picture. 

We weren't allowed to take photos inside, but I got this one from their Web site. It looks better than a photo I could have taken anyway. After that, we wandered through the old town on our way to the museum.

Along the way, we saw this Cretan "fixer-upper". Can you see the potential? I'm thinking a Bed and Breakfast. 

We also say some more interesting houses. Tomorrow we're going to walk through all the lanes we can find.

When we got the main square and the main museum, we found that we had to walk across town to the Byzantine collection to actually buy the combo ticket that we wanted. 

When we got there, we found that, because we're both "senior citizens", we got in for half price. Neat. 

Like the church, the museum wouldn't let us take any pictures. (Although, just in the time we were there, we saw two people sneaking out their iPhones when the guards weren't looking.) We didn't do that, though. Instead, we just found some pictures on Google and are going to use those. Here's the herd of bulls recovered from a temple of Poseidon. Apparently people too poor to sacrifice a bull could purchase one of these statues instead.

There was a large Minoan collection (but not as large as the one in Heraklion, which we'll see in a few days). This is a Minoan pull-toy from about 2,000 BC. It looks almost exactly like one the our granddaughter Phoenix played with (although ours is a bunny). I'm sure the little string is more recent.

After the museum, and before lunch, we visited the Etz Hyyim Synagogue, Crete's (not just Chania's) only remaining synagogue. It was damaged in WWII and reopened in 1999. Today it serves a congregation of seven. We went inside and saw part of the grounds, but since they were filming a documentary there, we couldn't see everything.

By now it was almost 1:00 PM, so we stopped for a bit of lunch and then back to the room.