Hania

My introduction to Aegean Airlines involved them (one assumes) saving my hide. I’d made it as far as Athens, flying low over the various gorgeous islands, then waited a couple of hours to board to Hania. After we were all loaded, we sat and sat, waiting maybe an hour without moving, until finally they announced that we had to change planes, since there was something unresolvable wrong with the one we were sitting in. So we deplaned and road another bus back to the terminal, while they transferred our luggage to a replacement jet.

A Polite Harbour Cat
One of the first people I met here was a cat. She lives around the harbour and thought I might be interested in sharing my chicken gyros with her. Unfortunately, I had just eaten all the part that cats like. I finally spotted a scrap. It occurred to me, however, that the restaurant might have a policy, so I asked the maitre d’. “It’s okay,” he said, “I feed her something every night, from the side. She’s a very nice cat. She recently had kittens.”

The Skulking Hour
It turns out, of course, that the city is littered with cats, all of them feral. What this means in practical terms is that there are a couple of societies who take some responsibility for catching them, neutering and spaying them, giving them a little doctoring, and releasing them again. However, it is a never-ending struggle to keep the population at a reasonable level. Just up the street we have a set of garbage bins that are the stomping grounds of an entire colony of thirty or more, all of them ready to hiss at you while you are feeding them, as Susan quickly discovered, but also to bunt your leg and purr like idiots. As with cats all over the world, twilight is the skulking hour, when they spend their time in intense but silent negotiations with other cats. They wait until four or five o’clock in the morning before the negotiations turn noisy.

Staring into the water
One of the pleasant options available for the discerning traveler in Crete is to stand by the edge of the water and stare into it. You see all kinds of people doing it all over the harbour, from grizzled old ex-fishermen to round-eyed kids taking their first steps away from the strollers. Susan and I have spent a few hours now in this innocent pastime, and have seen shoals of minnows of at least ten different species, as well as a needlefish, a couple of kinds of crabs, and, on one occasion, a local brown dolphin who came up briefly for a breath of fresh air.

Scraping my knuckles on the antiquities
Here on the northwestern coast of Crete, we have a lighthouse, originally built by the Venetians in the sixteenth century, remodeled by the Egyptians in the nineteenth century, and subjected in the twenty-first century to a thorough renovation that ended in 2006. There are spotlights that shine on it every night, making for a picturesque harbour. There is also a stone pier, about a mile long, where young couples can take a walk that affords them some measure of privacy for discussion, while they remain in the full view of the entire city. Susan and I elected one day to stroll along the pier, walking at first on the second level. When we decided it was time to jump down to the lower tier, I managed to scrape, not my palms, not my nose, not even the improbable top of my head, but the back of my left hand. Luckily, the Greeks sell a very nice version of band-aids, made of paper white fabric.

Croissants with jam
Wherever you go, you need to figure out how to eat, and part of that equation involves learning what is normal or at least readily possible in each country, and what is odd or downright can’t be done. In London, for instance, there is instant custard from a packet. You can buy it at any shop and prepare it in a minute with a bowl, a fork, and a cup of hot water. Similarly with raisins and gruel. In Krakow, on the other hand, forget about custard, and watch yourself with the gruel, which may just as easily be barley as oats. In Hania, they’ve never heard of custard or gruel, but for entire shelves at the supermarket and at every corner cigarette shop, you can buy individually wrapped croissants already filled with chocolate or jam. The package for the peach version even has a glowing white halo around the sacred croissant in the middle.

A dip in the Aegean Sea
Crete is home to at least a couple of world-class beaches, but they both involve a bus ride from where we are staying. The buses at this time of year are not frequent, so it is a bit of a commitment to get there and spend a day. As an alternative, a ten minute walk along the sea wall will bring you past a sports arena, a little marina where the kids are learning to sail, a small fishing fleet, and on to a local beach populated by elderly people who are taking the sun and a dip in the Aegean as part of their health regimen. We’ve joined them now on several occasions, and the water, I must admit, does wake you up.