Western Crete - Day 4
Thumbnail panels:
Today, we start a little later. We are going to Paleochora, then Anidri. The road between Souda and Paleochora is being enlarged. For those of you reading from California, just imagine Hwy 1 between Jenner and Mendocino being larger and not having guard rails. For those of you in Haiti imagine Route de l'Amitié being a 4-lane road, the BVI people this is the road just about anywhere between the ocean and the mountain crossings.
It's early on a Sunday, there are few cars on the road, the sun is coming up over Souda Bay, it is just amazing. At the German military cemetery we start the descent into the mountain to Paleochora which is a lovely, charming and still relatively undiscovered seaside village. It is interesting to discover so many beautiful places because of my obsession with the Byzantine Churches.
Along this route, we see several tiny little villages embracing the contours of the road. At Voukolies, a truck loaded with plastic and enamel household wares becomes our traveling companion; it is driven by a gypsy hawking his merchandise through a loud speaker attached to the top of the cab.
From time to time we stop for an iconostasis, when it is to unique to pass. A particularly interesting one, clearly older, had been embedded in the "parapet" during reconstruction of this stretch of road, the oil lamp, prayer beads and images were still in place.
When we got to Paleochora, the sun was at 11 o'clock in the sky, the bakeries were open and everyone was walking to the beach. We parked the car in a shaded spot and went walking to see the town.
We were going to stop at the tower at the entrance of town, the old Venetian fort, and the cafe at the alst bend ebcause the entire town seemed to gather there, and we wanted a "frappe". What a beautiful place...
The image gallery works in Internet Explorer and Firefox.