Chania and Rethymno Crete, Greece and the JW Marriott, Crete

The colors of Greece.  This serene setting was captured at the Arkadi Monastery, which dates back to the 1100s.

We landed in Chania, Crete and picked up our car and drove 15 minutes to the brand new JW Marriott just outside of Chania, which had only been open for 4 months. We explored the resort and it was beautiful on the inside and outside but we had arrived in the dark so we couldn't actually see the true beauty until the next morning.  

The JW Marriott Crete at night.

We were hungry and we walked less than a kilometer to one of the local restaurants which was a little pricier. I ordered a traditional Cretan salad and it was much like a Greek salad but with soft feta and rusks of bread. Traditionally it just came with the extra virgin olive oil on it and I asked for some red wine vinegar. I added that and it was amazing with the addition of the vinegar. 

Cretan Salad

This kitty found us at both restaurants two nights in a row.  She was very sweet and just wanted to be pet and she may have wanted our seafood too, ha ha.

We had a good sleep and I opened the curtains to a glorious view which was masked by the darkness when we arrived.

The JW is on a peninsula in the Mediterranean Sea, panoramic Views of the Sea are everywhere.

We made our way to the complementary buffet breakfast which was absolutely unreal. Probably the most selection I've ever experienced anywhere.  Everyone pigged out and we're very gluttonous the first morning, we learned quickly not to do that again. 

Buffet breakfast by the pool and Sea.  Lisa and Vicky are drinking our traditional Greek Coffee.

We took a drive into Chania and parked and made our way towards the Old Venetian Harbor front with the lighthouse. The stones were a beautiful honey, gold color and very picturesque. We walked along the seawall towards the lighthouse.

Beautiful ancient Sea Wall that dates back to the 1300s.

Its a bit of hike out to the Lighthouse

Gorgeous gold colored stone of the
Old Venetian Harbor.

There are two different levels you can walk on. We were on the lower level and we heard some commotion above us.  This little girl had lost her hat which blew onto the lower level.  Vicky ran and grabbed it and attempted to throw it up to her and it blew into the Sea. Vicky is always ready to go swimming at any moment and she quickly did a striptease on the lower level including her purse, her watch, top and her skirt went flying into a heap and she jumped in and saved the little girl's hat, who at this point had started crying. 

Vicky in the sea who had rescued the hat.

All the British girls that were watching the Crazy Canuck dive into the Mediterranean for the hat, thought she was crazy.  Vicky was our new hero but not to the ungrateful little French girl who was still giving Vicky the stink eye because her hat was now soaking wet. We laughed for the rest of the entire day and I'm still laughing dictating this 4 days later. 

The lighthouse behind us.

Then we made our way back to the main Harbor area where Darren was already indulging in a Coke. We continued on along the shopping area and I spotted a white and gold T-Shirt that I knew I wanted. I bought one and Lisa bought one too.  Lisa and I have very similar styles and she had to find and buy her collectible bottle opener too.

A floating tourist trap of a store selling Macrame Plant Hangers which were big in the 1970s.

This floating boat was selling authentic Loofah Sponges for 1 Euro.

One of the gates into the Old City of Chania Crete.

And another gate....

Lighthouse in the background.

The old waterfront in the background with the Mosque.  Ottoman Turks had invaded Greece many times.

A pretty Greek Waterfront Restaurant.

We continued walking around the shopping area of the harbor front where many restaurants are located.  We continued walking up into the narrow streets of Old Town Chania. There were lots of interesting things to see and one of the things we noticed was every third house or Palazzo was just a shell and had not been renovated or refurbished. There is a lot of work that needs to be done in Old Town Chania. 

There are many cats in Crete. 

I loved the shape of this ancient building.

Very interesting vegetation.

Vicky on a Cobble stone street in Old Town Chania.

There are many sets of stairs in Chania.

Very narrow streets of Chania.

Typical street in a medieval walled city.

This Bougainvillea Vine was unreal and eclipsed the width of the street.  It was a gorgeous welcome.

Ancient houses tucked in beside the Old Wall of Chania.  It's understandable that the old red house was leaning. These buildings date back to the 1200s.  Although Minoan settlement does date back as early as 3650 BC in this exact area.

We stopped and found an Art store for Lisa who always likes to buy a small original piece of art to frame. We had good conversations with the owner of the store that represented 18 or so artists and she said that a lot of vacationers are coming and buying up the properties that have caused the escalation in housing prices.  The foreigners rescue the house and fix them up and rent them out, but at least they're being fixed up 

There were a lot of cats in certain areas, usually congregated around restaurants.  We made our way out of Old Town by going down a set of stairs and technically walking through a restaurant and then down a really narrow alleyway and that was cat central. 

Arnie under an Orange Tree.

A Muslim Mosque Minaret, (say that 5 times quickly).

Lots of leather products to be found in the Old Town shopping.

Us in a pottery store missing our 4th Yummy who was back in Canada.

We made our way eventually back to Darren where we all decided we needed to use the bathroom. 

We sat and had a drink while watching the beautiful sunset over the Old Venetian Harbor of Chania Crete Greece.

The setting sun shone a spectacular glow on the Old rocks of Chania.

When in Europe, if you need to use the washroom you have to sit down in a restaurant and buy a drink and then you use their facilities. Or you find a public washroom which are extremely difficult to find and pay .50 -1.00 Euro.  I had a decent glass of Rose and they put out a tiny bowl of peanuts that were to die for.  I've never had such good peanuts in my life. So the quest was on to try and find these peanuts and buy them. We went to the local Lidl store which is equivalent to a Walmart Grocery Store about 10 minutes away and I bought some peanuts for .79 Euro and they were a close second. 

That night I had my bath which was in a very comfortable bathtub at the JW  Marriott.  We made our way to Lisa, Vicky and Arnie's room. Vicky and Arnie had purchased some traditional Greek fare, pita bread, honey, olives, tzatziki, wine and some meats and we had a little buffet spread and that's what we had for our supper that night.  We were still full from the breakfast Buffet.

The next day after a less gluttonous breakfast, we drove to Seitan Limania Beach about 35 minutes from the JW.  The drive down to the beach was a series of treacherous hairpin turns with one side of the road being a straight cliff down to death.  I couldn't even look.  The views were spectacular when I looked up. I got out of the car and started the walk down. I did not bring my runners, I had my Birkenstocks with me. It was probably one of the more treacherous trails down that I've ever been on.

But we did make our way safely down and then we caught our first site of the beach, which was beautiful.  It is an inland finger of a gorge that twisted in towards this white sand beach. 

Our first glimpse of the inland water gorge.

The beach.

It was stunning. We put down our towels where there was room because it was quite crowded at the beginning.  The girls wanted to swim and we got in the Sea and it was glorious.

It seemed to be saltier than the average sea.  I don't know if that was because of the way it was shaped and the body of water held more concentration of salt?  It was so easy to float that I kind of just bent my body in a sitting position and barely moved my arms and I just floated. The water was calm. It was a gorgeous blue white color and extremely clear. It was amazing, then something bit me.  It was one little 4" silver fish who kept biting Lisa and I and alternating between the two of us. It actually took some skin on Lisa's ankle. It never made me bleed but the second bite actually did get me out of the water to see if I was. The tiny fish that thought was a shark could of had a movie made about him.  I have never been bitten by a fish before the little bastard.

He did not take away from the glorious swim and experience of it all.  I could have stayed in there for hours. It wasn't even that cold and it was late October. 

We took the trail up out of the gorge a different way than we came down and this was shorter and it also had a chain bolted to the rocks which made it much easier to get a hand hold in the treacherous areas. There was one area where it was really quite steep and I had to get a picture of Vicky and I captured the precariousness of the trail.

I walked up first and I was able to capture this photo of Vicky.

Vicky appears like a pretty goat on the side of the mountain face. 

On our way up the mountain and looking back at the beauty of that water.

Arne Vicky and Lisa.  Darren was ahead of me.

I took a Panoramic photo.

The girls, almost at the top.

We continued driving towards another beach to try and explore Crique de Soudas Beach area.  It was another gorge like formation.  This area had a tiny little Greek Church built into the side of the mountain rock and I mean tiny.  The girls called me in because they were lighting, candles.  In Europe you can pay a Euro to light a candle for somebody that has passed. Or maybe you're praying for somebody in the present. It was a beautiful moment because right when I'd lit the candle for my sister Michelle who recently passed in May and my Dad who also had passed, another sister Deidre texted me on the Fleming Sibling group chat. Deidre was saying that it was 15 years since dad had passed to the day and I thought it was just such a cool moment through osmosis that we were all thinking of our beloved that we have lost. 

In the tiny church with our candles lit behind us.

Rock wall of the church.

Even though that was a cool experience the beach turned out to be a bust.  They're is no longer a marked trail to get down to the water.  It had already been a long day and we were tired from the last hike.

We drove back to the JW and found another restaurant and tried their Cretan salad but it wasn't as good as the night before. This one had the addition of boiled potatoes and stewed tomatoes on the top, which was not my jam.

The next morning we decided to take it easy and actually spend some time at JW Marriott because the resort was gorgeous with several pools and places to swim in the Mediterranean which we took full advantage of.

The day beds at the JW were very comfi.

The dock where you could get down into the water and swim and we did.

Pools were everywhere at the JW.

We did get a little bored after a couple of hours and decided to explore a little bit more of the island and make our way to Stavros Beach which was about 30 minutes away. This was a very unique beach of eroded sandstone and the sandstone took on a very jagged appearance and ended up forming a wall which formed a pool of sea water. We had our own private little swimming pool of Mediterranean sea water. We hung out there for a bit. Arnie opened a bottle of wine and we had a nice time. 

At Stavros Beach striking a pose.

See the rock wall that has naturally formed.

We had a blast.

We were hungry so we stopped at Mama's Place and I ordered a Chicken Gyro Pita, my very first one ever and it was delicious. 

My Chicken Gyros.

We headed back and I had another glorious bath. 

Back at the JW you can see Chania in the distance.

We packed it in for the night and the next morning we went for breakfast and it was Arnie and Vicky's last breakfast with us.  

Arn and Vick were headed to the Maldives next and we would miss them.

The 4 of us decided to go to Elafonisi Beach a long drive away and is claimed by many people to be the most beautiful beach in the world due to the pink sand.  Plus Arnie had been talking about this amazing baklava/ pistachio gelato that we had to try.  It was in a town on the way to Elafonisi Beach. We found the pistachio and baklava gelato which was to die for.  We kept motoring towards the beach.

Along the way, we saw some men harvesting olives with their hand held tools. 

The Olives

This tool cuts the Olive stems

Then they fall into the green mesh tarp to be gathered and poured into sacks.

Its very common to see a green mesh
tarp on the road.  This is to
catch the Olives.

The harvesting of the Olives was fascinating and later that day back along the road we saw a truckload of gunny sacks of olives and stopped and talked to the Olive Farmers. 

Bags of harvested Olives.  The nice man offered us an olive to taste.

 On the way we spotted a sign with a big tree and got out and it was a 2030 year old Olive Tree, which you don't see every day so we took some photos.  Apparently Olive Trees can live up to 4000 years.  Who knew?

If you ask Google, she will tell you that the oldest Olive Tree lives in Crete.  Some experts believe this tree is as old as 4000 years.

Me under the oldest Olive Tree in the World.

I have the longest arms int the group and I have to take all of the selfies.  This one was in front of a scenic gorge of which there were numerous along the way.

We arrived and parked and had a 15-minute walk down to the water and it has a bit of a pink glow to it where the water laps up on the beach. It was lovely swimming in the water after we found a nice piece of beach to lay down.

Elafonisi Beach before we walked down to it.

Crystal Clear Sea.

Crystal clear waters of the Mediterranean. 

Pink Sand

We swam for about a half an hour and stayed for about an hour in total and walked back through the water. You have to remove your shoes if you want to walk out to the sand bar.  It was only knee deep water at that point.

We took the ocean road to Falasarna Beach where we spotted a herd of goats and stopped and took pictures.  They were very different looking goats from a Canadian goat. 

Greece has macho looking goats with big horns.

Two goats eating Olives and Olive leaves from the trees.

Views along the way were spectacular, very rugged mountains and numerous Olive Groves and thousands of Olive trees, many scrubby bushes and more goats.

Absolutely stunning views of Olive groves, islands, orchards and vineyards.

Small villages pepper the landscape.

Numerous churches are in Crete and this one appeared to hover over the gorge.

We drove into Falasarna Beach and there was Big beach and Little beach and we stopped at Little beach and it was very rugged in this area with huge rock formations and concrete looking rock formations. The rocks looked man-made but they were not. 

Weird rock formations on the beach.

Lisa and Vicky walking on the beach.

Arne and Vicky

Pretty mauve bushes were everywhere.

The weird rocks that looked like concrete.

The sunset was on its way.

We walked around a bit and there was quite a bit of flora that is unusual to me. Trees with spiky leaf formations on them and little bushy mauve plants were everywhere.  It was very pretty in an extremely rugged way. All of the plants seem to be very hardy in this area.

Sea Fennel which is a strange succulent/flower plant.  Apparently Sea Fennel is making a resurgence in Greek Cuisine and abroad.  It is a super-food.

Vicky's cover girl shot in the setting sun.

A fiery sunset that night.

The next day Lisa, Darren and I left the JW and drove approximately 1 hour and 15 minutes to Rethymno. We thought it would be a little town but it is the third biggest city on Crete.  Darren dropped us off on an extremely narrow street and Lisa and I made our way up to the Rethymno Fortress.

Walking through the pretty streets of Rethymno.

The tall Fortress wall to the right and Rethymno to the left.

The fortress gate with a musician, who had a really nice voice.

The entrance in to the Fortress with the beautiful cobble stones.

The Mosque

It is quite extensive and immediately I was confused because there was a mosque in the center of the fortress grounds and it was the largest building. I admittingly do not know much about Greek history, so this has inspired me to learn more about it. Apparently the Ottoman Turks invaded Crete several times and apparently they won at least once. The last major battle fought against the Turks was 1866. The fortress was €5 to enter and it was quite pretty and it had numerous bastions on the fortress walls.  It also had the typical buildings like magazine buildings, chapel and quarters etc.

The chapel on the Fortress grounds.

Great views of the Sea.

Cannons

Looking through the Fortress peep hole.

Inside the Mosque.

It was a pretty Fortress in Rethymno.

We made our way down to the Old Town and walked around a bit and shopped and I bought myself a rock bead bracelet for 6 Euro. 

A cute little pottery store.

A Pretty side street with the lighthouse in the distance.

Pretty building in Rethymno Crete.

We made our way towards where Darren had found a parking spot after looking for around an hour. Parking and Toilets are hard to find in Europe.  But if you want to see a lot of both of them you need a car rental.  Darren was parked across from Poseidon Restaurant and Hotel, we sat down and Lisa ordered a big beer and I ordered a glass of wine and it was the best glass of wine so far this trip to Europe. I even got the name of the vineyards.  The waitress was quite friendly and had a very big personality and she said we definitely should order the Saganaki Cheese. Lisa and I shared an order of and it was very chewy cheese. It was coated in egg and deep-fried.  Lisa thought it tasted like a Mozza Stick, I thought it was chewier and slightly better. 

There was a monastery called the Arkadi Monastery within a 20-minute drive of where we were situated in Rethymno. We drove up on very narrow road and managed to go down a one way road going the wrong way.  The Monastery was €4 for an entry fee and that was well worth it.

The outer walls of the Monastery.

We walked around for approximately an hour and the the only thing it was lacking was it didn't have enough labeling of the different things in the museums and the different artifacts lying around near the Monastery. It was a large building with walls in a square and within the walls were arches and under those arches were the cells or the rooms of the monks. These particular monks were allowed to own their own property and this establishment was quite a wealthy monastery. They owned extensive lands for harvesting and growing their olive trees and vineyards. They were predominantly vestment embroiderers and they embroidered with silver and gold threads.  They sold them internationally even back in the 1800s.

The beautiful church of the Monastery.  This church reminded me of the Alamo in Texas.

The rooms of the Monks to the left.

Vaulted Barrel ceilings.

The different buildings forming the large square.

Original clay jars, most likely for Olive Oil and Wine.

Pretty common spaces for the monks.

The kitchen space.

This is the room that was reconstructed after the explosion.  Many women and Children died in this space.

The Monks had beautiful varieties of Roses.

  This Monastery dates back to 1100 and it's in fairly good condition, but this Monastery is most famous for the Battle of 1866. When 15,000 Ottoman Turks invaded the Monastery.  There were 963 people in the monastery, very few soldiers and women and children.  Some town's people joined the fight from the surrounding villages. Apparently Crete was under Ottoman rule and very oppressed.  It was the Christian stand against tyranny and they fought back. 

It ended badly for the Christians and the Monastery. The Ottoman Turks had cannons and howitzers and they eventually broke through the walls but this siege took approximately 4 days. These 963 people fought the 15,000 soldiers off for that long. There were very few people left, basically the women and the children and the Priest.  They barricaded themselves in the Magazine room, all the men were dying outside of the door and they knew they were about to be raped and murdered or enslaved and added to the Commander's harems.  The priest purposely lit a match and blew everybody up. This apparently made international news in 1866 as this tremendous fight against tyranny and oppression, plus it made a pretty interesting story.  The Christians had approximately 300 guns, incredibly they survived 4 days against 15,000 men with cannons and howitzers. This demonstrated incredible bravery and the Greek people are incredibly proud of this part of their heritage.  

The Monastery was built well and even the Ottomans could not destroy it.

Cavernous Rooms.

Lisa in the distance.

Lisa walking the grounds.

An extremely old Bible dating back to 1710

This red Bible dates back to 1588.

The monks hid most of their gold and silver chalices and silver and gold embroidered vestments and anything of wealth. The Ottomans had looted the Monastery but they didn't find the hidden treasures.  These are on display in the Museum on the Monastery grounds. 

The very last thing that we made an effort to see was an old trunk of a Cypress Tree which is still in the courtyard of the monastery.  It has a large bullet still lodged in its trunk and this was from an Ottoman weapon.  There is a bit of a moral to the story and it is that Christianity will prevail.

An ancient Olive Tree on the Monastery grounds.