After all of the drama of getting on the ship yesterday, leaving today was a piece of cake. After a good nights sleep in our luxury room we woke up and headed down to François. As soon as we sat down in him someone from the ship pointed down the ramp and we were off, the first ones off the ferry.
A short 20 minute drive later we arrived at the only campground in Chania, a little nervous that we may have trouble getting in so early. It turns out it was no problem at all as they only have about 5 customers. They were happy to see us.
We settled in and then headed down the coast to walk to Chania. Chania is an ancient city originally founded by the Minoans. The Minoans were a big thing from 1450 to 1100 BC. Since then it has been at various times Greek, Roman,Egyptian (Mark Anthony gave the island as a gift to Cleopatra), Byzantine, Arab, Byzantine again, Venetian, and finally Greek again. Actually that lineage is true for the whole island of Crete.
I visited Chania once in 1982 when I was in the Marines. After finishing our time in Beirut as “peace keepers”, we were flying to Naples on a Navy plane when the pilot declared it was broken and we needed to land on Crete. We ended up going out for dinner in a beautiful little port town and I always remembered it as one of the most memorable meals in my life for a lot of reasons. I suspected it was Chania, but until today I was not sure. When I saw the waterfront I knew right away it was here and I could almost pick out the restaurant we ate at.
We walked around Chania for a few hours and Ton took a lot of pictures, but when we returned to François she didn’t want to send any of them to me as she wasn’t satisfied with the light or something. I negotiated to get one picture of the town, and she promised me lots of pictures tomorrow.