Old Tech and Icons

 

September 15-17

Friday began with a visit to the Museum of Ancient Greek Technology. Many of the exhibits were novelties, like the steam powered rotating ball. 

It was the first use of steam power, yes, but it would be 2000 years or more before anyone actually put it to practical work. There was also a jug using a system of valves so you could pour water and wine from the same vessel.

There were automated puppet shows using elaborate transmissions and cutout figures.

There were also models of hoisting devices with complex gear mechanisms that raised the stones for the grand buildings of the city.

I was hoping to see an Archimedean screw, a water-raising device attributed to Archimedes, who was involved in the development of many of the objects on display.

I not only got to see a fair-size model of one, but even got to crank it. Larry caught the picture of the day.

At dinnertime, Larry, who I may have mentioned was our minister of gastronomy, led us to Archipelagos, a well-reviewed seafood restaurant not far from the Venetian port.

We shared several exotic dishes: Fish roe dip, hibiscus bulbs, fried anchovies, grilled baby squid, grilled sardines. The bulbs looked like pearl onions. All the dishes were superb, like most of the food we have had in Greece.

Larry paired the food with another fantastic local white wine.

Dessert, we discovered early on in our Cretan dining, is frequently on the house. It usually consists of a 100 milliliter bottle of anise-flavored liqueur, usually raki or ouzo, accompanied by a few sweets. 

Archipelagos served us ouzo, along with two plates of gelato and chocolate cake, which Larry and I took, while Joanna had gelato with baklava. It’s almost as if they knew she doesn’t really care for chocolate.

Later, Larry and I sat on the balcony outside his room to take more wine and some raki, which is similar to grappa and isn’t as sweet as ouzo. 

Saturday Joanna and I walked to waterfront again. We took a different route. I think the street is named Evans, after the archaeologist of Knossos.

It ended at a plaza that Joanna recognized. We had been here a few nights earlier with Larry looking for a restaurant. When she pointed out the “Intercontinental” sign I recognized it too.

We took the familiar pedestrian street back to the hotel. On the way, we decided to stop at a church that received considerable attention each time we had passed it before.

The church, we discovered, is the cathedral of the archbishopric of Crete and is dedicated to St. Titus, who appears in the New Testament book called Acts of the Apostles. 

Titus had accompanied St. Paul in his missions, including the one to Crete. Paul left the island after a short stay and had Titus stay to preach Christian sermons and make conversions. 

According to Wikipedia, there had been a series of churches on the site. The current building was built in the 19th century as a mosque and was later taken over as a Christian church.

Like most orthodox churches I have seen, it is colorful and enhanced with images in the Byzantine style.

We walked around deciphering some of the names on icons. There were two large paintings of groups on the rear wall of the nave. One may represent the Dormition of the Virgin, in other words the death of Mary, the mother of Jesus. If that’s so, the other painting would be the Assumption.

The Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches both accept the doctrine that the Virgin Mary was assumed bodily into heaven. A Greek Orthodox friend once told me that the churches disagree on one point. The Orthodox believe she died before the Assumption. The Catholics believe she did not die.

We stepped into a side chapel to see the principal relic of the church, the skull of St. Titus. It is held in an embellished reliquary, which is open at the top. I felt that it would be taken as blasphemous if I tried to peek into the opening to see the actual skull, so I reined in my curiosity.

We stopped to buy a charm for Joanna’s Pandora bracelet. She chose a miniature of an artifact from Minoan times. The original, which is in one of the many archaeological museums, is the figure of a bee, an important creature to the Minoans, who exported honey as far as Egypt.

We joined Larry for our last dinner in Heraklion, which was at Avli. When we had eaten there before, we had liked it so much that we immediately reserved a table for our last dinner together. Last, because Joanna and I were heading to Athens and then home, while Larry was on his way to the beach at Rhodes.

There’s more to the story, though. 

Larry had gone to a wine store near Avli and had run into Marilena, our waitress from the other night. He discovered that she owns the wine store. An enterprising family, indeed. She had stopped at the store to pick up a few bottles for the restaurant.

The family had laid in the goat for our dinner. When it came to the table, it had been braised to a succulent tenderness in tomato sauce with a variety of seasonings. They also served us snails made in a new way, almost a risotto.

The local red wine, recommended by Marilena, was nearly as good as the food.

Before we left, Joanna got a recap of the recipe from Katerina, the chef.

We had an 11 a.m. checkout time at the apartment on Sunday. We had no place to store our bags, so we had to go to the airport way too early for a flight at 6:45. Sky Express wouldn’t check our big bag until two hours before flight time.

We put most of our luggage in a baggage storage office and cabbed back to the Venetian port.

I took my bag with my computer because we expected to spend a few hours dawdling at cafes in the area. I’m not sure that was entirely realistic thinking.

The first bistro was a bust. We ordered something called crab salad and expected to get lumps of crab meat with leafy greens. 

Not so. It was like eating in Indiana. There may have been crab in there, but mostly it was strings of cabbage and some thin noodles swimming in mayonnaise.

Joanna couldn’t stomach any of it. I went through a few forkfuls before we decamped.

We went a few dozen yards to an outdoor cafe called Avra. There we had more luck. It was clearly a tourist joint. Maybe some of the customers were local, but most were from far out of town, like us.

We shared a plate of spaghetti in a seafood sauce: mussels, shrimp, chunks of white meat fish, and I don’t know what all. Delicious.

We tried taking a walk, but my bag was packed for travel and way too heavy for a stroll.

We took a cab back to the airport. We found place to sit and and there was a lot of time to compare notes with Joanna and begin writing. The wifi was useless, so fact-checking would have to wait. 

The flight to the Athens airport in Piraeus takes about an hour. The cab ride to central Athens lasts almost as long.

Our hotel, the Noma, is on a small street lined with restaurants. It was an OK place. It was clean, but way too cramped. We kept tripping over furniture. The bathroom was so small there was no place to keep toilet paper.

It was on a shelf in the hall when we arrived. While we were there we stored the roll on the closed toilet seat cover.

The location is so great, though, that if it was the only game in town, I’d stay at the Noma again.

We found a place for dinner right outside the door. Named for booze and snacks, Raki Meze did not disappoint.

We had a beetroot salad with orange slices and walnuts. When it arrived, with all the ingredients carefully arranged, it looked like something Salvador Dali 

would serve to Gala.

Then we dug into the grilled sardines with oregano and another dish of grilled chicken with a fruit sauce made of oranges and mustard. 

It was all very good, even the chicken with the strange dressing. We knew it would be. Anything that sounds so wrong has to be great.

After a bit of raki for dessert, it was time to crash.

That’s all for now, gang.

I’m still working on the rest.

Be well, everyone, and remember: When the going gets raki, sip it. It’s the good stuff.

Love to all.

Joanna and Harry

Playing the Palace

 

September 13-14

Like most islands, Crete has had a long list of different people running things. When the Venetians had their turn, they built a fortress on a spit of land to protect the harbor. It’s known by its Italian name, Rocca a Mare.

We went to see it for ourselves on Thursday.

The fort is still there, somewhat restored, I guess. So are a number of large storehouses across the harbor from the fort.

When we got there, the harbor had an array of boats and ships. Two large ocean liners were docked next to each other. There were small boats tied up along the arm of land that we walked to reach the Rocca.

We wandered around inside the fort for a while. A couple of old storerooms hold artifacts recovered from old commercial shipwrecks—dozens of amphoras arranged in the way they had been loaded.

Years ago, Mechanical Engineering magazine carried a story about exploring shipwrecks in the Mediterranean. The leader of a project to salvage a modern ship told our reporter that one of the complications in working the Mediterranean is that all the ancient Phoenician wrecks get in the way.

We headlined the story “Potted Old Wrecks.”

There are vessels from at least three ancient shipwrecks arrayed in the fort. The amphoras from each one are arranged side by side secured by rope as they would be in a hold to keep them from shifting and possibly breaking in transit.

None of them is old enough to be Phoenician. One is Byzantine, maybe 10th century. Another is later, perhaps 16th or 17th century. The other is identified by the type of amphoras as coming from Rhodes and may date to the second century A.D.

There are baroque cannon barrels on display. They were made to be striking not just with cannonballs but also with imagery. Many were embossed with fantastic crests surrounded by garlands. 

The whole place is a warren of chambers. One has an exhibit about the defense of Heraklion against the Ottomans in the 17th century. 

Much of Crete had fallen to the Turks by the time they attacked Heraklion. The city, defended by the Rocca a Mare, withstood a siege of 21 years.

I’m not going swear to that. I wasn’t there. But that’s what the narrative on the wall said.

The fort’s defenses were breached in 1669, but even so, the Venetians were able to negotiate terms that let them empty the city of all its people and avoid a massacre. When the Turks entered Heraklion, they found a ghost town.

After a brief rest back at our rooms, we gathered to go to a tasting of wines made on Crete.

Larry had struck up a friendship with the owner of a wine store, My Cava, near the apartment in Athens. When he learned that Larry was going to Crete, the store owner told him about another serious wine bar.

It’s called Kelari Wine. Kelari is within easy walking distance of our hotel in Heraklion.

The man said to ask for Nicole and mention his name.

So Larry did, and suddenly we were VIPs.

Nicole conferred with Larry over the wine list. He wanted to taste wines made on Crete from local grape varieties.

Larry and I had a half glass of each wine. Joanna took sips of my glass each time.

The first was a white aged in oak from Amargiotakis Winery. It used a local grape called Thrapsathiri. Aging a white wine, especially in oak, is rare, Larry told us. 

Maybe I liked this one more than Larry did. I enjoy the flavor that oak can give wine. And Larry? Not so much.

The second was something really new to me, an orange wine from Ampelourgein Winery. It’s not made with oranges, Larry promised. The color, an orange-tinted pink, comes from fermenting white grapes in their skins.

Ampelourgein ages the orange wine in amphoras for several months

Power of suggestion may have come into play, though. Joanna and I both sensed a slight orange flavor and aroma in the wine.

Next up was a rose from a winery called Pateromichelakis.

Rose wines begin by fermenting red grapes with the skin, but only for a limited time. Then the grapes are pressed and fermentation continues with the juice alone. They pick up some color from the skin.

This rose was made from a local red grape called Romeiko. 

The final sample was a red wine called Archanes from Moinoterra Winery. It is a blend of two local grapes, Kotsifali and Mandilari. 

They were all terrific, without exception. The discussion of the various wines between Larry and Nicole was way beyond my understanding of wine-making or wine-tasting. So I’ve hardly scratched the surface here.

Somebody with a diploma in wine could have done a much better job. One guy with a diploma like that even said he might help me out. But then he just handed me some notes. He knew I was going to bust his chops about it too.

From there we went to an interesting place for dinner, Paradosiaka Taverna.

The menu had something identified as antikristo lamb. We all did a double-take. What’s that? Devil’s food? We knew one of the things we were going to share.

Google told me later that the name is a little less sensational. Antikristo is a traditional form of barbecue on Crete. The term means “across the fire.”

Lamb or sometimes goat is quartered and placed on a rack around an open fire. The fire at Paradosiaka is behind a glass barrier placed where everyone can see it.

There is also goat cooked in tomato sauce on the menu. 

Two strange (at least to us) dishes in one place. We had no trouble deciding.

We bought a kilo of the lamb 

Allowing for the bones and fat, that left a little more than half a pound of meat for each of us. Perfect.

The barbecue came with roasted potatoes. The goat plate had potatoes, too, but they were fried, and they went very well with the tomato sauce.

We bought a bottle of red to go with the meat and settled in to enjoy another great meal.

Friday we took a cab to Knossos. It’s the site of a large palace complex surrounded by the remains of an ancient city. The British archaeologist who led the first systematic dig at the place, Sir Arthur Evans, dubbed the culture “Minoan,” after the legendary King Minos.

That’s a bust of Evans on the left.

The Minoans are generally acknowledged as the founders of Western Civilization.

They lasted for quite a while. In the end a series of natural disasters brought them down.

Some of the palace has been restored. At least one fresco, of figures bearing jugs, has been refreshed. It’s the top of the two wall paintings in the photo of the day.

There is also a chamber called the Throne Room. It has a formal-looking chair centered on one frescoed wall. There is a large bowl on the floor a few feet in front of it. 

Very ceremonial, but nobody knows what purpose it served.

The photo at the head of this entry is a peek into that room.

The most famous image of Knossos is what’s left of a portico supported by deep red pillars. Behind the remaining three supports is a fresco of a charging bull. 

A tourism promotional video that we saw somewhere along the way shows a mother and child walking through the Throne Room and strolling across the porch. Like hell.

If you type “Knossos” in your search engine, It’s likely to be the first photo you’ll get. It will certainly be taken from a better angle than mine.

We took the shuttle bus back. As we were waiting for it, we could amuse ourselves by watching people going in and out of the souvenir shops across the road. 

Even more fun was when one of the local peacocks showed up. He strutted around for a while looking for crumbs that tourists had dropped.

He wasn’t exactly shy. But he wasn’t too sure of me, either. Every time I stood up, he turned his back on me and strolled away, carefully and deliberately to make the point that he wasn’t in a hurry. 

He was telling me: “To hell with you old man, I’m too pretty to hurry.”

According to Google Maps, the bus was going to take us almost to the door of our hotel. We wound up at the bus station instead and had to take a short cab ride home.

After a brief rest, Joanna and I were starving. Dinner was going to be around seven, so we went out for a snack at one of the eateries on the long pedestrian street around the corner. 

The street starts at Kornarou Place, a park where pigeons gather next to our hotel. It runs up to the Venetian Port.

It feels like a Jersey boardwalk or the Temple Street market in Hong Kong. Here they sell an assortment of stuff, often souvenirs like tee shirts sporting Linear B and dream-catchers with a motif that wards off the evil eye. 

Once in a while there is a stand selling fruit and vegetables. There are plenty of food and coffee shops. 

We’ve walked the street several times because it’s the route to take to get to most of the places we’ve wanted to reach. The day before, I had seen a sign for Greek pizza in front of one of the food vendors. We found it at a place called Politia.

If this was supposed to be a snack, we overdid it a bit. Joanna had a very good chicken gyro, and I had the Greek pizza. It was topped with sliced tomato, no sauce, a melted cheese similar to mozzarella, and crumbled feta, all sprinkled with a bit of thinly sliced onion and bell pepper. 

They had retsina on the menu. It’s generally downscale and many people hate it.

It’s made with pine resin, which gives the drink its name. It’s usually white, as this one was, and sometimes rose.

I hadn’t had it in years. It came in a glass bottle with a cap, like beer. 

It’s not for everybody, and I probably won’t order it again before a few more years go by. But it was fun. And I was thirsty.

We strolled back to the hotel and rested until dinnertime came around. We went to O Tempelis.

After our serious lunch earlier, Joanna and I focused on a few small plates. We had some kind of green vegetable similar to spinach that was boiled and served cold. There were stuffed zucchini flowers, a preparation similar to stuffed grape leaves, but using the squash blossoms as a wrapper. The sliced beets cooked in olive oil were Joanna’s favorite.

The house white was nice and tangy. The red was OK, too. It was served cold and got better as it warmed.

Good night, gang. Remember to keep your hearts warm and your orange wine chilled.

Love to all.

Joanna and Harry