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Honoring Roots: The Ancient Olive Tree of Vouves

It has been famously stated that, while ‘poems are made by fools like me/only God can make a tree.’ This is a truth so obvious it almost doesn’t need to be said. I, ever the poet, languish on my silly little travel blogs while God divinely calls forth mighty oaks from saplings, or great pine trees from tiny cones. I’m not envious, really. He sticks to what he does best and I stick to what I do best and we all get along swimmingly. As a result of the divided labor, however, trees were never at the forefront of my consciousness.


That’s not to say I never spared any of my thoughts for the trees. In my youth, my father spent a great deal of his time (and, as a result of my status as child, my time) at plant nurseries, finding the most beautiful trees to plant and rear with love and care in our growing garden paradise. While I was supportive of this in the abstract, I had no real desire to join my parents in the hard work of actual gardening. In my mind, the Florida sun was only fun if I was at the beach, a theme park, or doing some sort of activity that was catered to…well, me. Though I was often enlisted to assist against my will, nothing about hard work in that heat appealed to me. While I can look back on those memories with a relative fondness, today I am content to live in an apartment where I barely remember to water my little cactus once a month.


My childhood instilled in me a respect for trees, even if I don’t go out of my way to cultivate a green thumb. I’ve helped plant them, I’ve harvested fruit from them. I’ve watched my parents work tirelessly to attempt to save sickly ones, transplanting trees delicately from one part of the yard to the other in an effort to give it more sun or more shade. I grew up with the constant reminder that deforestation was a legitimate issue, with campaigns to save the rainforest everywhere there was an iota of environmental awareness. Save the Trees! Plant a Tree! Hug the Trees, Kiss the Trees, Speak for the Trees! Trees faded into the background of my life as a nice thing to appreciate during walks in the evening or strolls through a botanical garden, but they did not occupy much space in my thoughts besides. They gave me oxygen, I took them for granted.
But on the island of Crete resides a very special tree. I had heard about it in passing, a small factoid dropped in an otherwise casual conversation, but it struck me as such an odd thing to consider ‘casual.’ To be told that one of the oldest living trees in the world currently lives and breathes only 146 kilometers from the villa you’re vacationing in sounds like a bombshell. Something about being in the presence of a practical immortal filled me with curiosity, and I made a point to see with my own eyes the Ancient Olive Tree of Vouves.


The Olive Tree of Vouves is not, as I first thought, the oldest living tree in existence. This honor belongs to Methusela, a Great Basin Bristlecone Pine tree that resides in the White Mountains of California. If we factor in the different types of trees such as clonal colonies, angiosperms, gymnosperms, and a million other words that I learned just to write this cursory sentence, you’re going to have a difficult time narrowing down just which tree you want to visit. But the Olive Tree of Vouves is estimated to be the oldest living olive tree, and on a place like Crete, that is no small thing. Olive trees are nourishing. Their fruit has sustained civilizations upon civilizations, from the days of the Minoans to the modern day. Their wood is beautiful, and when treated right, makes furniture that lasts. Their branches have come to not only represent victory, such as when crowns made from their branches were woven into crowns during the Olympics, but also as a symbol of global peace. Of all the trees to survive the test of time, it is the olive tree to keep persisting.


The tiny town of Ano Vouves a little ways west of the city of Chania. The winding roads are surprisingly easy to navigate, and though at times you are required to pass through the villages carefully, it isn’t hard to reach. You see the tree before you even come to a complete stop, unable to miss the gargantuan trunk and mass of branches. Parking is easy, right in front of the tree itself, which is good because once you’ve made it there, it’s difficult to look at anything else. Around the tree, the buildings all cater to the celebration of The Olive, from a tiny museum related to how olive harvesting was carried out, to olive oil-based products, and even a café that sells ice cream and olive oil products, all from those olives harvested by a tree in the center of the square. This is the oldest olive tree in all the world, though the signage indicates we cannot be more precise. We are able to place the tree anywhere between 2,000-4,000 years old, but cannot test for sure due in part to both the age of the tree and the fact that the heartwood, the thick center of the tree, is no longer present. Scientists at the University of Crete are responsible for giving us as close of an age approximation as we have.


The tree itself is a great, imposing thing, almost akin to a great sleeping god rather than tree. It is within a dirt patch, with bricks creating an ankle-height wall around it. It is thick, its’ knotted wood twisting and knotting in great patterns across its’ trunk stretching into the ground like thick legs. It gives the impression that at any time, this hulking beast of a tree could uproot its’ mighty legs and walk away. It is perhaps the thickest olive tree I’ve ever seen, almost 15 and a half feet in diameter, and yet the only olive tree I’ve seen that is hollow at its’ center. Instead, if you’re so inclined, you can peek through into the center of the tree, stepping into another world of dappled light, bugs, and the sound of a breeze wafting through the leaves. It is almost as if the tree body has become a living temple to nature, complete with a choir of cicadas singing hymns to olives.
I touched the tree, and touching a living thing that was old enough to be domesticated by another civilization astounded me. It was like touching something holy, and in many ways I suppose I did touch something holy. What is holier than a tree that fed and nourished not just the Greeks, but the Minoans before them? One of the first wild olive trees to fall tame to the hands of man, outlive them all. Still it lives. Still it breathes. Still it grows its’ roots into the Cretan earth, still it produces olives for the locals of Vouves to take, to grind oil from it, to take care of the tree in return.


When I visited the tree, there were children playing all around the square. I wondered if it must have always been like this, the sun shining down on this great tree as it watched the world around it live, running about just like the ants about its’ branches. I wondered if it could feel my touch, what level of awareness such a thing like that could have. I wondered if it was, perhaps, the oldest living thing, let alone tree, in all of existence. I wondered what all of that meant.


I was not there for longer than perhaps an hour. I stayed for some ice cream and watched the tree from the covered patio as I ate, listening to the cicadas, feeling the breeze on my own skin. I smiled at the sound of a tourist train coming to fetch passengers to other places, possibly to Chania which was only 30 miles away. The sunset was coming, and with it the beloved Golden Hour all photographers chased, and I felt that the tree was more beautiful than anything I’d ever seen in my relatively short life. I would be a blip, if that, in the lifespan of this tree. I would not even be a memory, if trees are capable of such a thing. But the impression that this giant of branches, leaves and wood left upon my mind is set in stone. I felt a peace I’ve only felt in the halls of forgotten churches, in quiet cemeteries, in hallowed ground.


If only God can make a tree, he certainly knocked it out of the park with this one.

By Katarina Kapetanakis

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Destinations

Mountains of Mayhem: A Journey into the Mountains of Crete

It began, as most half-way decent stories do, with a misadventure in a small mountain town.

I woke that morning with a plan, a mission. I’d found out about a Museum of Musical Instruments thanks to a cursory google search, and as I am a great lover of music and a collector of instruments, (which I will one day learn to play, I promise), I really wanted to pay it a visit. The only problem? The museum was located in the small mountain town of Krousonas, and at this point in my travels I was not yet used to driving through mountain towns. The second problem, the fact that the museum closed at 2pm, was an afterthought. Still, it was my job to investigate the fun, lesser known activities around Crete, so I shoved my doubts about driving aside and grabbed my sister. Together, with my sister acting as navigator, we booted up the GPS, rolled up in my grandfather’s 1997 dark green Honda CR-V, and drove up into the mountains. 

A word on Krousonas: I did not give it a fair shake. Not at all. I was there for one specific museum and was hyper-focused on trying to figure out where the hell I was supposed to park in this extremely residential area, and I panicked. My sister and I came to the conclusion that we’d have to walk, navigating streets far too small for even my grandfather’s ancient car, so I found a place I hoped I was allowed to park and did my best to ignore the judgmental eyes of the town’s elderly population, whose icy stares was enough to make the Mati turn it’s entire gaze my way. A fun personal note: I learned to parallel park that day, under the watchful eye of every Yiayia and Papou in a two-mile radius. 

Krousonas is actually quite nice to look at, and quite picturesque. The mountain village is, for lack of a better word, authentic. If you truly want to see how the Greek people live, drive to a town like Krousonas, where few tourists know to venture. It’s complete with an atmosphere that lets you know that everyone who sees you knows you do not necessarily belong there, even if you’re used to passing for native Cretan in downtown Heraklion. If you look up Krousonas on wikipedia, you’ll only find how large it is, (25.109 sq mi), how many people live there, (2,564), and which municipality it belongs to, (Malevizi). None of this information helped us any as my sister and I hiked up and down the steeply inclined roads, our GPS leading us in circles. At one point we thought we had found it, but a quick peek through the windows led us to believe we were in danger of committing a home invasion accidentally, so we backtracked. We spent two hours in this manner, with a brief interlude where a kindly old woman tried to give me directions only for language-learning apps to fail me completely. Had she only asked me “where is the pink avocado?” or even “Where is the smoking camel?” perhaps we would have gotten somewhere, but a certain green owl had neglected to share the more vital phrases, such as directions, into my brain. After sweating our asses off until the museum was officially closed, we hiked back to the car in defeat. 

Still, it wasn’t a complete loss: the local church was a gorgeous sight to see from the outside (I was not exactly dressed to go inside, so I settled on observing it from a distance). Just outside the church was a bust of who I first assumed was a figure-head, perhaps a local politician, before I noticed the name: Antonis Grigorakis – Satanas. I let out a poorly timed expletive and quickly took a picture, before sending it to my father to verify if it was in fact our distant relative and noted Cretan revolutionary. After a confirmation (and a confused flurry of texts asking why we were in the middle of a tiny village), my sister and I took turns taking selfies with our ancestor before sadly hopping back into the scorching, AC-less Honda CR-V. 

I wasn’t sure what the next step was. What I wouldn’t give for a Me, someone who wrote incredible travel blogs that pointed visitors to Wine Dark Sea Villas in the right direction for interesting stops around Crete. But alas, there is only one me, and I had to do the hard work of having a great vacation. I was about to consider the day a wash and make it yet another beach day when my sister spoke up, reminding me about a theme park we’d seen ads for while at Dinosauria. The idea intrigued me. The ads had billed it as the first theme park centered around Greek mythology in all of Crete, and I am always ready to visit a theme park, no matter what kind it is. What would that look like? Would there be roller coasters, or would it be more of a walking fantasia? As the resident lover of the Creative and the Camp, I was down for anything.

I turned the key in the ignition and handed my sister the GPS, allowing her to lead us once more onto a new adventure. 

Had I left directly from Villa Bella Mare, the drive would have taken me an hour and eleven minutes. It’s a fairly simple drive, following the A90 to the E75 to Malia, up into the mountains as the GPS leads you onward. In a standard rental, this drive isn’t an issue, and leads to some spectacular mountain views. The majestic Lasithi Plateau gets to shine in full force as the road’s sheer drops magnify the mountainsides, and as the sun sets, the colors reflected are some of the most gorgeous. However, I was not in a car that was really meant to be driving up mountains. In fact, if the check engine light was to be believed, I was not in a car that was meant to be driven at all. I really felt this as we began our uphill trek into the mountains, the sharp incline causing me to slam the gas so I wouldn’t fall backwards onto the cars behind. Dear God, I begged, please let everyone stop tailgating me, I am doing my best. Still, the drivers behind, who couldn’t know the struggle my poor Grandfather’s car was under, let their frustration be known until we were in a place safe enough where they could pass me, (or they simply lost their patience). After a 45 minute-eternity, white-knuckled and wondering if we had enough gas to get home, we pulled into the parking lot.

You may remember an article I wrote about Lasithi once before, where I hiked up and into the Dikteo Cave, famous in myth as being the cave of Zeus’s birth. So you can imagine my surprise when I realized I was in the exact same parking lot of said hike. We’d chosen a peak hour to visit, and were forced to drive to the parking lot by the souvenir shops. Though the parking was still free, we were asked very politely by the store owner to please be sure to purchase something from his shop in order to make up for it. As I am a lover of spending money on trinkets, I enthusiastically agreed, and we rounded the corner to the entrance of the Mythological Park.

The enthusiastic worker at the front desk was very passionate about the park, and told me that it had been built in 2020. This was a 6 year passion project on the part of the Pitarokilis family, and is proudly the first mythological park in all of Greece, let alone Crete. Now, if you’re expecting rides, you may be disappointed: the Mythological Park is a walk-through exhibition, designed to immerse you in mythology, not to subject your body to 6 Gs and sudden drops. But what immersion! Every exhibit is a piece of mythology come to life, from the princess Ariadne who leads you into the labyrinth, a recreation of the palace of Knossos, to the great scene of Theseus slaying the Minotaur. Haunting audio thrills the imagination as you walk past tableaus of the sacking of Troy, of bull-jumpers, and Daedelus and Icarus taking flight. One of my favorite parts of this first chamber was the recreation of the infant Zeus, (who, if you remember, was born on Crete), whose cries were masked by two guards who clashed their swords as loud as they could to hide him from his father, Kronos. The immersion of the audio left quite the impression on me, and was the last interior exhibit seen before I stepped back out into the bright Cretan sunlight.

The park doesn’t end with the indoor tableaus. Instead, visitors are met with a grand sculpture of Zeus, with the surrounding walls detailing the Greek Pantheon and more scenes from mythology. It’s designed to look like a grand temple, though there is no roof. But the most interesting part is the large hole in the floor, surrounded by rod iron railings. Though you cannot descend, you can peer down into a gateway to the underworld, where the sounds of shades standing before Hades, Persephone (and a menacing Cerberus) echo in the cavern. I wish I could have descended into the Underworld for a closer look, but perhaps it’s best to leave such a descent to Orpheus or Heracles. 

I continued walking around the outdoor temple for a while, the hot Cretan sun beating down on me mercilessly as I admired the reliefs and statues of Poseidon, the birth of the Minotaur, Atlas, and the nine muses. The path of the park is one way, and leads visitors through a giant pot, where the figure of Greek philosopher Diogenes resides with his faithful dog. For those unaware of one of history’s most intriguing minds, Diogenes was an irreverent philosopher who founded Cynicism. This large pot was a recreation (though perhaps an exaggeration) of the real clay wine jar he resided in. This exhibit marks a change in the mythological park from myth to reality: once you step out of the pot, you are transported to Crete in 1967.

Designed to be a recreation of one of the many villages in the Lasithi Plateau, we are taken back to a time where the mountain agricultural lifestyle still reigned supreme. There is also, as a highlight, a gorgeous chapel that plays chants on a continuous loop. The art inside is a tribute to the Orthodox style of icons, and is complete with an altar and candles for prayer. You can even make a donation and light one yourself, as you sit and admire the beautiful cave-like chapel.

As you exit the park, following the path into the gift shop, visitors are greeted with one last mythological tableau: The Argo, Jason’s mythical ship, sailing to the Golden Fleece. The gift shop, coincidentally, contains souvenirs that come directly from the Pitarokilis family shop, and is full of statues, ceramics, olive oil products, and even some delightful raki (that I did purchase, and have since consumed with great fervor). We were then told that the larger shop was just a little ways down the mountain, and was impossible to miss: the storefront was lined with rows of windmills, telltale signs of Lasithi, and statues upon statues. This store was one I’d passed several times on my way to visit Zeus’s Cave in the past, and I was excited to pay it a visit at last. After bidding the Mythological Park a fond farewell, (and stopping to purchase a delightful rug from the store next door in accordance with our pact with the shopkeeper), my sister and I decided to stop at the Pitarokilis family store. 

If ceramic souvenirs are what you’re hoping for, be it pottery recreations or statues, this is the place to shop. It is a deceptively enormous store, filled with incredible handmade works that seem to go on for miles. I wished in that moment that I was made of euros, for there were full sets of handcrafted bowls and plates I would have loved to return to the States with. Beautiful plaster statues of my favorite gods, including the lesser depicted ones, adorned shelves, taunting me by being just a little bit out of my price range. I got a demo of the famous Pythagoras cup, also available for purchase, before making my way to the back of the store. A ramp leads you further into the expansive store, this section exclusively for olive oil, karob, and raki products. Things in this section range from skin care to consumables, including some olive spreads I enthusiastically purchased, fantasizing about how I would enjoy them for breakfast for each remaining day of my vacation. The skin care section was even more incredible, with products that contained olive oils, dead sea salts, volcanic soils purporting to have special properties I no longer recall, and many more. I have been faithfully using the products I bought as my skincare routine, and I do have to say that my skin has never felt better. In times where I grow anxious about how I will continue my routine now that I am back in North America, I am comforted by the thought that they do, in fact, ship. 

It was right around the point where I was disassociating from my incoming credit card bill that the woman who rang me out asked if we were interested in the pottery workshop. I had no idea what she was talking about, but my sister, who is an artist herself, was eager to learn. This was when we were led even further in the back, down some stairs into the Pitarokilis family workshop. Most, if not all, of the souvenirs sold in the shop (and in the gift shop of the Mythological Park), are made here, as were the exhibits found in the park. It was an exciting peak behind the curtain as we were led further in, our host taking us to the maestro potter who would be walking us through what to do. 

For only 4 euros a person, you too can participate in this workshop. Don’t worry if you’ve never worked with clay before, or if the words ‘potter wheel’ strike fear into your heart. You’re guided through every (extremely messy) step, and by the end of it you’ll have your very own tiny vase or pot. I loved the feeling of manipulating the wet clay, as if I was reconnecting with some ancient part of my own Greek heritage. It was so incredibly tactile, so grounding to feel a part of wet earth take shape in my hands, even if they were being guided by someone much more experienced and talented than myself. After we were cleaned up, the maestro led my sister and I to a stalagmite-covered throne, and after he helped us into some togas, we took photos meant to evoke a Persephone-like energy. I feel like we came close. 

We packaged our tiny pots carefully, as they wouldn’t be completely dry for at least a day, and hopped back into our grandfather’s aged car for what we hoped would be an uneventful drive back to Villa Bella Mare. In the end, the only think remarkable about that drive was the sunset casting it’s fiery hues across the mountains, eventually making our way to where it turned the sea into a delicate purple. Perhaps Hephaestus had a hand in it, considering our day had been spent admiring the act of crafting. In the end, the misadventure had turned into an outright journey across the mountains of Crete, and we returned to our villa with a feeling of accomplishment. 

Oh, and if you’re still curious about the Museum of Traditional Musical Instruments, never fear: it has since moved to downtown Heraklion, where the judgmental Papous are only judging you half as much as you think they are. 

By Katarina Kapetanakis

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Destinations

Double Feature: Or, How the CretAquarium and Dinosauria Helped Me Feel Like a Kid on Vacation

I spent most of my childhood in the little-known, secluded seaside town of Miami, Florida, and as such I am no stranger to aquariums. An appreciation of marine science was ingrained in me at a young age, and though it never went farther than that, (note how my career has focused almost exclusively on the written word), visiting aquariums remained a favorite pastime. I tend to seek out aquariums every time I travel to a new place, and usually spend at least one happy afternoon whiling away the hours with the sea creatures on display before I continue on with the more traditional vacation spots.

But this time, I was in Crete, Greece. Crete! Land steeped in history, mythology, culture, and scenic backdrops to make your Instagram followers quake with FOMO envy. I had more than enough to occupy my time, between the gorgeous ruins and crystal clear ocean waters. I was busy with museums, new towns, pink-sand beaches, and mountain hikes. Did I really need to seek out another local aquarium?

Of course I did. How could I not want to see it, after seeing signs plastered all over town? Since I was traveling with my sister, I posed the question to her: did she want to see the CretAquarium? She immediately assented, especially after she found out it was located right next to a dinosaur theme park. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The CretAquarium is located in the town of Gournes, just 15km outside of Heraklion. From where my sister and I were staying in Wine Dark Sea Villas’ Villa Bella Mare, it was about a 20 minute drive down the leisurely A90 highway until the Old National Road, and from there it was a simple matter of trusting the maps app implicitly.  The CretAquarium is located in what is best described as an ‘educational compound,’ where two other science-based attractions, a planetarium and the aforementioned dinosaur park, greet you before your final destination. I followed the signs along the winding road to the aquarium and found, to my surprise, a lovely beach. While I suppose the possibility of a beach should have been something I was prepared to take advantage of, considering Crete is in fact an island, the idea of making my trip an aquarium/beach day combination had not crossed my mind. My advice is, on your next trip to Crete, always keep a bikini in your back pocket in case of emergencies like this.

The CretAquarium is a large, rounded building, adorned with a picturesque mosaic of an undersea scene. In a shallow fountain, a model submarine used for undersea exploration sits as you make your way to the entrance. A giant, plaster octopus that sits above the door, beckoning in visitors who have since found themselves distracted by the numerous and overly affectionate stray cats that wait for visitors to share their café snacks. Still, the promise of air-conditioned relief is often enough to pull people away, and was in fact just what I and my sister needed to prompt us to enter the building before another cat begged for our attention.

My ears were instantly bombarded by the sounds of excitable children who were eager to move through the line and into the tunnel leading to where all the fish lay, which was perfectly understandable. But I chuckled at the sheer number of couples, all either in their late teens or early twenties, who were eager to use the low lighting and shimmering lights as the way to set the mood for a romantic interlude. My sister and I, for our part, wasted no time in indulging in the whimsy of it, posing for pictures in the low blue lighting of the entrance. Speaking of color, the CretAquarium is actually the first aquarium in the world, not just the country, to be accessible for the colorblind. Upon entering the museum, should you need it, there are QR codes posted for a free app called ColorADD that the aquarium has made an effort to integrate into their exhibits.

Inside the aquarium proper I was initially taken aback at the dulcet tones of Enya playing softly over the speakers. I had never considered how aptly her music is suited for watching large, colorful fish drift beyond a pane of glass as artificial light filters through the waves. It was an interesting and, dare I say, oddly beautiful experience. I felt that this might be the closest I could come to experiencing what a day in the life of an undersea creature must feel like, minus the constant struggle for survival. I’m sure the music was accurate to what they would experience. It was incredibly appropriate, and my sister remarked as such. The informational plaques, written in both Greek and English, were incredibly informative. I had no idea of the richness of biodiversity in Greece’s waters. I knew that there was a variety of fish, to be sure. Cretan seafood is one of my favorite things about the island. But learning that Crete’s waters were also home to such a variety of life was a wonderful truth to discover.

In between the ethereally lit fish tanks, their bluish silver water casting ripples of light on visitors and the surrounding alike, hung suspended skeletons of sea creatures from another age. Whether they were casts or originals, I could not say, but I stared in wonder at what was supposed to be the skeletons of ancient turtles and bottle-nosed dolphins. I admired the great rock faces of what could have been incredible undersea reefs, ruined temples sunk beneath the waves, and a shipwrecked wooden ship that housed a dummy dressed in an old diver’s suit hunting for sponges. The sculptors of the interior structures in this aquarium truly outdid themselves, as the fish had temple ruins, pots, and grand rock faces to swim around.

Besides its incredibly calming atmosphere powered in no uncertain terms the melodies of Enya, was that it inspired a desire to swim, to immerse myself in the very seas I had just glimpsed into. I kicked myself as we left the building, and my sister stared wistfully at the waves as the summer heat descended upon us once again. The sounds of children playing in the waves carried over to us as we walked to the car, and my sister groaned as the wave of heat hit us in the face as the hot air from my grandfather’s ancient Honda roared to life.

It was then that she recommended we try to visit one of the other places in the educational compound, since we had nothing else planned for the day. I shrugged and checked google for the hours. We had exactly one hour and forty-five minutes left to explore the place, so I nodded and made our way up the meandering road back to Dinosauria.

As I pulled up to the entrance, I had to laugh at the homage to the gates of Jurassic Park. The large Tyrannosaurus Rex head sat frozen in a triumphant roar over the entrance, and as we made our way inside the building we decided to refrain from paying for the extra experiences like the interactive science exhibits, seeing as we only had a short time to explore before we closed the place.

We passed under the legs of a large t-rex and into a dimly lit room with casts of enormous fossils. The bronze head of a triceratops was almost gold against the burgundy carpeted room, and the large stegosaurus skeleton cast a mighty shadow on the wall. To leave the room, we had to pass through a rotating tunnel of stars and comets, disorienting us as we traveled ‘back in time’ to the room portraying the annihilation of the dinosaurs. The room was a stage of chaos as the great comet plummeted to earth, destruction and chaos everywhere we looked. The children we passed along the way ‘oohed’ and ‘aahed’ at the tumultuous scene, concerned for creatures frozen in their swan song. My sister ducked under a wicker nest, giving a small start as she noticed the ‘dying’ plesiosaurus hidden among the reeds, but we cut our horsing around short as we heard the excitable sounds of what promised to be more children coming through the tunnel. In our most dignified manner, we followed the path to another tunnel leading to the outdoor area, and stood face to face with ‘life-sized’ animatronics.

Giant moving figures of rubber, metal and paint roared to life as we stepped onto hidden triggers in the pavement. We were greeted by sounds of the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods all at once, as if a mad Greek John Hammond had sprung up and made these creatures real again. Well, perhaps not too real. I’ve seen animatronics of more fluidity, or paleontologically accurate paint jobs. However, the size and scope of these creatures was massive. Wandering the paths took us past an enormous Tyrannosaurus Rex that swung down its mighty head as we slowly walked around it. I marveled at the giant apatosaurus, the feisty liopleurodon frozen in the man-made lake, and of course at the fun sculpted rocks and waterfalls that lined the pathway. Though the heat was unforgiving, I had to admit that being out in the sun was more bearable when surrounded by giant, moving, and sometimes roaring dinosaurs.

Perhaps you think I’m teasing when I say this, but I had the time of my life here. I enjoyed the whimsy of it, not to mention how genuinely well researched and educational this experience was. Though I could not understand the children asking questions of their parents or their parents’ explanations, I heard how in awe they were of the giant beasts. And I have to admit, I was impressed by the scale of the attraction, and how well maintained their dinosaurs were. It was certainly a place I would go to again, especially if I had rambunctious children who wanted a break from all the culture that the adults were more likely to enjoy.

After a brief respite from the heat at the outdoor (but covered) café, where we shared a giant liter of water, my sister and I spent a few minutes contemplating buying enormous dinosaur plushies in the gift shop before ultimately deciding it was time to leave. Though the evening ahead of us was spent at our villa’s pool, relaxing as the heat finally subsided, we left the place with a sense that our day had been well spent. Perhaps the next day we would visit another archaeological site, or a highbrow museum. But today we had indulged in whimsy, and I believe every vacation needs just a touch of that along the way. 

By Katarina Kapetanakis

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Destinations

The Little Things: A Trip to Snail Farm and Fun

Considering the vast number of their species, I never spared much thought for the humble snail.


I’ve eaten plenty of escargot in my life without giving them a second thought. I have indulged myself on Cretan snails on several occasions, enjoying each savory bite. Still, for all my chomping and chewing, I did not spare much thought for the origins of the tiny creature mashed between my teeth. It’s not that I harbored any ill-will for them. I simply was not in the habit of thinking about snails at all.


That was to change in the summer of 2023. My sister and I were exploring the small beach town of Ammoudara, on the outskirts of Heraklion, when we first noticed the signs. They were delightful, hand-painted signs advertising Snail Farm and Fun, in the region of Tylissos. I had heard of the concept of a snail farm before, during a television special on a French snail farm, but had not thought about the concept in years. I didn’t realize that Greece, Crete especially, would finally give me the chance to investigate this curiosity. I made plans with my sister to visit the farm the very next day.


From Villa Bella Mare, where my sister and I were staying, it was a leisurely twenty minute drive up into the mountains into Tylissos. While the drive to Snail Farm and Fun was on paved roads for 98% of the drive, the final stretch was a very brief, well-maintained farm road that my grandfather’s 30-year old Honda was thankfully able to manage without issue. It was well marked with more of the signs, reassuring us that we were indeed headed in the right direction.


We met Vaso and her husband Stavros, the dynamic duo who own and operate the farm, as we pulled in. Vaso directed us where to park, and greeted us warmly. My sister and I glanced around the peaceful little farm, quiet except for the constant buzzing of the cicadas, and realized that we were the only visitors. I nervously asked if they were open to the public that day, as Google Maps had lied to me before when it came to operating hours. We had seen the sign, I told her, and we wanted to learn more about the snails. Vaso gave us a very enthusiastic ‘Of course we are open,’ and without any fuss led us into the shaded building where the snails were kept.


The snail enclosure was a long shed, with irrigation pipes designed for misting all above us in a grid. Under the green filtered light through the plastic siding, I saw rows and rows of V-shaped structures made of what I guessed was bamboo, the rungs spaced out an inch or so apart on each structure. There were about six long planters, with each planter containing about seven wooden structures, nestled amongst dirt and vegetation. Vaso led my sister and I down the gravel path in the snail enclosure until we came to the center, where she told us that, unfortunately, we wouldn’t see much snail activity that day. I asked her why that was, and realized that I had not actually seen any snails since I entered.


It was then that Vaso bent over and plucked what I thought was a stone from within the floor of one of the planters, and held her hand out to me. Sure enough, what I had assumed to be a rock was in reality a snail shell.


“They shed their shells, like hermit crabs?” I asked.


“No. This is their hibernation period. Look,” Vaso said, and flipped the shell over. Where I had expected a tiny, gelatinous body, was a hard, firm membrane covering the hole of the shell. “Snails actually hibernate from May to September, and as they sleep they add layers to the membrane. It protects them as they rest. You can tell how long they’ve been sleeping by how thick the membrane is.” To demonstrate this, Vaso pushed on the membrane of the snail in her hand until it came away, and held it up to show us the thickness of it. She pocketed the snail to cook it later, as it would not be able to reseal itself.


The Cretan people have a rich history of using snails as food dating back to the ruling Minoans. Though many consider snails a delicacy, the Cretans were kept alive by snails during periods of political turmoil and famine. When the Minoans starved after their civilization collapsed, they were not only able to survive on fish, but the snail. During World War 2, when Crete was occupied by the German army, the people of Crete staved off starvation by eating wild snails. They are a staple of Cretan cuisine, and many snails used by restaurants are still sourced from the wild. Farmed snails are often exported to restaurants on the mainland, where Cretans who have since migrated still crave the flavor of home. The spiral of the snail shell became prominent in Cretan art and jewelry, becoming a symbol of life, eternity, and synonymous with the famed Labyrinth of mythology.


You can imagine the awe with which I stared at the little thing sitting squarely in Vaso’s palm as she told me all of this. I had never put much thought into the creature’s existence before that day, but I realized that, ironically, this little invertebrate was the backbone of a people.


Vaso pointed to the clusters of snails that lay on the ground around the poles and clung to the underside of the V-shaped structures. She told us that snails tend to group together when they hibernate for protection, and in the wild hibernated together on the barks of trees where they will be camouflaged. The enclosed green snail house acted in a similar fashion to protect the snails from threats of birds or slugs that could take advantage of them at their most vulnerable.


“Slugs eat snails?” I asked, shocked that a creature I assumed was related to snails would so brutally turn on its brethren.


Vaso emphatically insisted that they do, and that they were not, as I had ignorantly assumed, brethren at all. Slugs are often a worse predator for snails than even larger animals, gooey terrors that they are. Vaso then pointed out the tiny white circles I had mistaken for gravel and showed me that they were, in fact, snail eggs. Snails are hermaphrodites, and after mating both parents lay a clutch of anywhere between 60-100 eggs. It takes a snail 30+ hours to lay a clutch, during which the snail is vulnerable to attack, (and I was beginning to question when they weren’t vulnerable, for all the good their shells do them). The infant snail grows exponentially, growing from the size of a pinhead to a pinkie nail in less than a year. Their shells, which they are born with, act like a tree stump, in that you can tell the age of a snail by how large their shells grow.


My sister then asked about the diet of the snails, and Vaso explained that they eat mostly vegetation, but are extremely picky. For one, snails will refuse to eat food that is red. If they eat apples, or even eggplants, they must be cut open, and even then the snails only eat the white fruit inside. They will not touch the skin at all. Her snails have a distaste for spinach, and most herbs, but make an exception for parsley. And she’s noticed, through years of trial and error, that their favorite food is zucchini.


The love Vaso has for her snails is apparent when she gives you this tour. She and her husband have been farming snails for 13 years, and they constantly experiment with finding the best ways to help enrich the lives of their ‘livestock.’ For the past three years, in fact, Vaso has taken to moving her snails to an outdoor enclosure just next to the building where they hibernate, so that they may spend their waking hours in an environment as close to nature as possible. There they can explore rocks and vegetation, eat, exercise, and even mate. Vaso says that, like cows, the act of going to a kind of pasture is enriching, and though they don’t possess enough neurons to truly ‘feel,’ it makes the snails seem happier. And happier snails lead to a better crop.


Vaso’s farm exports anywhere between 2 and 2.5 tons of snails a season, (as snails do, in fact, have a season). In order to keep farming, she must keep at least 200 kilos of snails in order have enough of a population to make more snails. Vaso explained that you have to wait a couple of years before the snails are ready to eat, as they must be big enough to be sustainable. Though the previous two seasons had not been as good as they’d hoped, Vaso and Stavros still loved their snails, their farm, and had hope that this season would be better.


After the tour, we spent a brief period enjoying the shade and the cicadas with our hosts, who offered us a refreshing glass of water to take the edge off of the oppressive heat. We chatted about life and mundane things for a while, until two additional families arrived, eager and excited to see the snails. My sister and I stayed briefly to finish our conversation with Vaso and Stavros, but though we were welcomed to stay and relax while Vaso gave her next tour, we declined and let her get back to work. Before I left I confessed to Vaso that I was a writer, and I asked permission to write about her farm. She consented, and we laughed together about how I had been acting as a ‘spy’ all afternoon. As I drove away, I felt contentment coupled with a deeper appreciation not just for the Cretan snail, but for the warmness and kindness of the Cretan people.


Snail Farm and Fun was one of the most incredible experiences I had during the 2023 summer, and it wasn’t just because I learned about the fascinating life of a snail. It was more so that I had gained a deeper appreciation for the little things that exist on this earth, thanks in large part to the hospitality I experienced at this snail farm. I realized that this farm exemplified what was special about Crete: A wonderful conversation between strangers at a snail farm, a moment in the shade, a smile… and yes, the snails.
Importance, in truth, is stored in the little things.

By Katarina Kapetanakis

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Old Made New: The Archaeological Museum of Crete

I was not one to be sentimental about heritage when I was a child.


This was, more or less, by design. My family wanted me to concentrate more on the present than the past, except of course when it came to the study of historical personages who did things of note. I wrote family tree projects with the cold lens of an academic, and the idea of ancestry became so far removed from me that it was more like examining the history of a stranger rather than analyzing myself. I was a mutt, without a past, without roots, without ancestors. For the most part this was not an issue, and my love of history was no less strong.
Which brings me to the grand epiphany I experienced in the Archaeological Museum of Crete.


There is a reason why this museum is on every “Best Thing to See in Crete” article in existence; it is home to antiquities of the most unique nature. It is one of the oldest museums in Greece, home to collections that began before the formal construction of the museum. The Archaeological Museum contains artifacts from every pivotal evolution for the Minoan people spanning the last 5,500 years, neatly placed into 12 expansive rooms on the first floor alone.


The Minoans were the first real civilization on the island of Crete, emerging from the neolithic population that first inhabited it. They were the Bronze Age powerhouse, with a formidable navy, a rich artistic tradition that went through several evolutions, and a complex and intricate religious system that archaeologists are still unearthing new details about. They were the epicenter of trade, connecting the Hellenic peoples of mainland Greece with Cyprus, Egypt, Syria, Anatolia, and Mesopotamia. They weren’t just the first inhabitants of Crete, they were Crete.


Upon entering the museum on a hot July afternoon, I found myself taken by the sudden weight of how old the Minoan civilization truly is. I have been to this museum many times before, but something about this visit struck me as particularly meaningful. The stone basins that they used for ritual cleaning, the delicate golden jewelry that is carefully displayed, even the little clay bulls all on display, were made by human hands so long ago I could not completely wrap my head around it.

I forgot to breathe as I stared at the famous Bee pendant, which was unearthed at the archaeological site of Malia in 1930. It is an intricate depiction of two bees (or wasps), each curved to form a semi-circle, meeting at their heads and stingers respectively. Three gold orbs hang from each wing and their connected stingers, and a circle of gold (perhaps meant to symbolize a fruit) sits between them. The piece is beautiful, and time was clearly spent carefully accounting for each detail in the textured wings and bodies of the bees. The realization that this was made by human hands, loving, careful hands, hit me like a train. Who had worn this pendant? Whose hands first undid the clasp and hooked it about their neck? Was it a gift? A purchase? A tribute to a ruler? ‘Who were you?’ I wondered, looking at every piece of jewelry that lined the glass cases.


Then there was the Phaistos disc, discovered at the Phaistos palace ruin in 1908. It is an unassuming object, a dull brown circle with a diameter not much bigger than my outstretched hand, (5.9 inches to be exact). It’s not in the cases that line the walls, but on its own encased pedestal in the center of one of the rooms. On each side of the disc, etched symbols follow a spiral pattern into the center of the disc, forty-five pictorial signs that are repeated and grouped in sixty-one different segments, on both sides of the disc. Is it a song? A hymn? A spell? Perhaps we will never learn the truth, as the disc is written in Linear A, and is still being deciphered. The placard on the pedestal dates the Phaistos disc to the early 17th Century BC. Yet again I found myself confronted with the almost uncomfortable fact of time, and simultaneously, how a human hand had carefully and expertly shaped and carved this little mystery.


Perhaps my favorite thing about the Archaeological Museum of Crete is how much art it showcases. There is something so intrinsically human about being an artist, and I think it is a testament to the Minoans that so much of their art has survived. A marvelous sculpture of bull-jumpers mid-leap represents the first time that art depicted motion in a three-dimensional space. I wondered if the artist knew they were the first, or if they had, like all artists, assumed someone had beaten them to it.


Just next to this statue is the famous bull-jumper fresco, depicting three jumpers, two female and one male, participating in the sport. One woman grabs the deadly horns of the charging bull, preparing to propel herself into the somersault. Her eyes shine with the confidence of an expert sportswoman, cautious but unafraid. The man is halfway through his leap, his hands spring boarding off the bull’s mighty back, his body moving on autopilot. The second woman stands behind the bull, arms outstretched in triumph, having just completed her leap. The bull remains forever in his forward momentum, ever charging, his brown and white coat standing out vividly against the bright blue background of the fresco. Out of all the frescos that once called the Palace of Knossos home only to reside in this museum, I think this is the most beautiful. There is a triumphant nature to it, not a mastery of nature but perhaps a mastery of the self; total control over one’s body is the only way to survive a bull-jump.


Only two rooms later, I found myself staring at the ‘Ring of Minos,’ a small golden ring engraved with the Minoan Epiphany Cycle. Dating somewhere between 1450 and 1400 BC, the golden ring depicts the Goddess, the primary deity that was worshipped by the Minoans for the majority of their existence. She exists in three forms: hovering in the air, on a platform that is also holding Horns of Consecration (which visitors of Knossos will recognize as the giant statue of Bull’s Horns that faces the mountains), and rowing a boat beneath a fruit tree. The goddess, and by default the Minoans, have dominion over air, land, and sea, and all who beheld the ring were meant to recognize this as fact.


When I first laid eyes on the ring, I was suddenly met with a fierce rush of emotion, and tears threatened to escape my eyes. I was taken aback by this. Though beautiful, the ring is quite small, and not the only ring on display in the case. But something about it touched me, and I was forced to quit the area before I embarrassed myself. When I visited the museum again a month later with a friend who had never been before, I was surprised to feel the wave of emotion flow over me again. Once again I left to explore the other artifacts as I let the feeling pass. I never figured out the reason why I was so affected. Maybe I don’t need to.


But perhaps the most striking thing about this museum is how much of the collection revolves around death as much as life. A sizeable portion of the museum is devoted to the Minoans’ burial practices, showcasing how they evolved as their civilization progressed. Jars specifically made to hold anointing oils for burial, tools to carry out burial ceremonies, and funerary reliefs reveal insights into how the Minoans cared for their dead. I was particularly struck by the examples of several Protopalatial, Neopalatial, and Final Palatial tombs, especially the large clay pots that housed skeletal remains of what was once a fellow human being. There is something to be said about the way a civilization cares for its dead. The Minoans, in most stages of their existence, took great care and reverence in burials. Staring at the visible skeleton that was laid to rest in one such great jar, I felt it spoke great volumes that, thousands of years later, evidence of this care still remains. I was one of thousands who came before that followed in the grand tradition of paying my respects to the noble dead.


I could write a book on all the wonders held by this museum. Several people already have. I could talk of the Snake Goddess, of the bull heads, the toys, or the effigies. I could go blue in the face exalting the historical importance of the collection in the cold and clinical academic context. Better men and women than I have long since beaten me to it. I have been to this museum several times in my life, but walking through those rooms on that hot July day, it finally became real to me that the Minoans did not exist in an abstract. The Minoan people filled their days with creating art, raising families, honoring their gods, waging war. They led the way of commerce in the Mediterranean and created a civilization rich with an art and culture worth remembering. They built homes and palaces, storefronts and temples. They built a life. Like I’m trying to. Like you, most likely, are trying to.


I still do not feel any strong ancestral tie. I do not feel as if I ‘belong’ in any place or among any people specifically. I don’t expect that to change, and I don’t know if I need it to. But what I feel instead is the commonality that spans across millennia to connect us as human beings attempting to turn our little lives into something worthy of remembrance.


And that is a tie I will cherish forever.

By Katarina Kapetanakis

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Destinations

An Overdue Stop in the Port: The Wonders of Chania

I have been writing for Wine Dark Sea Villas for almost two years now, and I am shocked to discover that I have not written about the city of Chania in all that time. I’m flabbergasted. Surely, I thought to myself as I scrolled through old entries, I would have written about Chania? Crete’s oldest port city, its original capital, my first real introduction to Cretan life…surely I would have written about this beautiful town by now. Sadly, I have been remiss in my duties as vacation raconteur, a mistake that I wish to rectify immediately.

Chania has roots that stretch all the way back to the days of the ancient Minoans, the original inhabitants of Crete. Back then, it was known as Kydonia, the source for the word quince, (which is appropriate, considering the prevalence of the fruit). One myth establishes that the ancient city-state was founded by Cydon, a son of Hermes (or Apollo, depending on who you ask), and his wife Akakallis, who was the daughter of King Minos. Another myth states Minos himself was the founder of this powerful port. Archaeologists are still excavating parts of the old town, and have determined that this ancient city-state (for all major cities on the island were self-governing seats of power) was not only an important center for trade, but was also constantly at war with other city-states like Aptera, Phalasarna, and Polyrrinia. Kydonia even has a small appearance in Homer’s Odyssey, though the mention is quite brief.

By 69 B.C., Kydonia had been conquered by the Roman consul Caecilius Metellus, though it was allowed to operate as an independent city-state. Fast forward a few hundred years and we find Kydonia renamed Al Hanim (Arabic for ‘the inn’), during a period known as the Rule of Arabs, once the island itself was conquered and the previous Byzantine rulers were ousted. In 961 AD, the city was reclaimed by the Byzantines, and renamed the city once more to the Greek ‘Chania’. The name has stuck, despite a temporary change under Venetian rule to the Latin ‘Cydonia.’ Since then, the city has changed hands multiple times, from the Venetians to the Ottomans, from them to the native Greeks, to a brief occupation by the Nazis during World War II, and finally, back into the permanent hands of the Cretans, though the capital of Crete was moved to Heraklion in 1971 after thousands of years of turmoil. I’ve done my best to condense a rich history for the sake of clarity, but I highly encourage readers to look into the fascinating and extensive history of this beautiful port city.

 

Of course, my own history with this city also has its twists and turns, and my impressions of the place have led to a deepening appreciation for Chania, its people, and its impact on the island of Crete. Every time I visit, I make sure to pay at least one visit to the city. You can never actually park close to the old parts of town, (unless you’re extraordinarily lucky, that is), but the parking garages that lie just outside the borders aren’t too far away to stroll leisurely into town. You may be tempted to visit the beaches there, with soft sand and clear blue water, with strange and curious ruins dotting the coast line and the road leading into the town, the Necropolis of Chania. The path is a straight-forward, uncomplicated one into the heart of the town, where vine-covered trellises grant much-appreciated shade to restaurants. Though the smell of the food might beckon you to stay, as it most certainly does to me whenever I go, I recommend that you take one of the alleyways down to the pier before you eat. There’s time to eat later.

Pick any one of the alleyways that presents itself. As long as it leads downward, you’re going the right way. Wonderful shops line both sides of the street, from the more touristy beach shops and ice cream stores, to the markets and stores that sell gorgeous and intricately painted wooden religious iconography in the orthodox style. Maybe you’ll pick up a set of komboloi, unique to you, that you can flip over your hand as you stare out over the harbor and out into the open sea beyond. It’s perfect for that kind of meditation, after all.

The harbor itself is lined with shops and tavernas of all kinds, though perhaps it is best not to dine at these particular tavernas that tend to overcharge visitors who come from the cruise ships, knowing they have no time to wander the city streets. Once you’ve decided to eat, you’re better off at one of the delicious tavernas you passed on your way down to the harbor. There are more novelty shops along this road, perfect for finding just the right gift for that friend or relative you’ve left behind. You can’t go wrong with a postcard. But the best thing about the harbor is the beautiful crystalline water, a blue-green window into another world where colorful fish often swim amongst the rocks. There are glass-bottomed boat tours that you can take for a leisurely two-hour excursion, and even a submarine ride that can show you the ocean in ways the average tourist has probably not seen before. In all the years I’ve visited, I’ve never taken either voyage, but one day I hope to.

 

If you’re facing out towards the water, the right hand side of the pier is where an ancient and beautiful mosque lies, a remnant of the Ottoman occupation. On the left hand lies the War museum and the Nautical museum of Crete, both filled with impressive collections that will thrill history lovers. (There are, in fact, several worthwhile museums to visit in Chania, including but not limited to: the Archaeological Museum of Chania in Saint Francis Monastery, the Folklore Museum, the Municipal Art Gallery, the Byzantine/Post-Byzantine Collection, the House of Eleftherios Venizelos, and the Museum of Typography.) Of these museums, I can only really speak in great length about the War museum, a place I highly recommend for anyone who wants to learn more about the heroic Cretan resistance to Nazi occupation.

Explore the alleys leading up and away from the port. Don’t be too afraid of getting lost: you can always find your way back by heading downhill. Up in the twisting alleys, you’ll find art galleries and unique pieces, evidence of Chania’s growing artistic community. If you’re a photographer like me, you’ll find wonderful shots around every corner, from open doorways leading to vine-covered stone courtyards to cats resting in the shade, and if you want to find wonderful, handmade textiles, you’ve certainly come to the right place. Stick around the town for a night of music and fun, as there’s quite an indie scene that’s up and coming in Chania, not to mention the flourishing Jazz scene. (Don’t even get me started on native Cretan music, which you can find in abundance).

Chania has something for everyone, whether you simply want a fun day out in the sun, a day on a boat, an afternoon of exploring museums and shops, or culture. It is rich in a history that is palpable, architecture that entrances, and a people who have pride in their city. Though I’ve been remiss in sharing my love of this enchanting place, it’s better late than never.

 

By Katarina Kapetanakis

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Destinations

Fishing for Fun: Heraklion’s Fish Spa

Those who know me best know that I am unable to resist a kitschy tourist trap when I see one. I can’t help it: the minute I know it’s there, all of my mature appreciation of art and culture flies right out the window, and all of my thoughts are consumed by an almost primal desire to do something dumb for the sake of the doing it. I can’t even claim that it’s done ironically: I genuinely enjoy exploring tourist traps. I love finding joy in roadside attractions, in things that may be more expensive than they’re worth but are nevertheless enjoyable, in things that, while on the surface a dedicated traveler may consider a waste of time, I consider an experience. I’m reclaiming my joie de vivre one wacky, weird thing at a time.

Which is how I came to be a patron of the Doctor Fish spa.

How could something so…relatively…cute be so flesh-hungry?

It is, as the name suggests, a fish spa. I had never heard of such a thing before, and had never even seen one in America, (although some people have informed me that they do indeed exist). The premise is this: the unsuspecting tourist, lured into the spa by the employees looking for anyone who’ll bite, is asked to first rinse their feet off in a sort of shower. Once they’ve rolled up their pants and handed over their sneakers, the tourist awkwardly climbs up onto a padded bench and unceremoniously dips their legs into tank containing twenty or so relatively small fish. For the next fifteen minutes, your legs are suspended in water, as these fish nibble the dead skin away. After your time is up, you awkwardly waddle back to the shower, wash your feet, and go about your day. The end result is supposed to be that, now all the dead skin on your calves and feet has been eaten, your skin has been exfoliated and is silky smooth. Bizarre? Yes. Hygienic? Possibly. The jury is still out. Just weird enough for me to want to try it? Of course.

To some, a nightmare. To me, an adventure. But also a bit of a nightmare.

For months, I had seen the store, as I had to walk past the place in order to get to Heraklion’s pier. I would walk down the main thoroughfare, glancing at it wistfully. Every time I asked my family if they’d like to try it out, they looked at me as if I had asked if they had wanted to try some sweet bread. It wasn’t easy, as I walked up and down this street often, buying souvenirs for friends. Each time I passed by the fish spa, the employees working the crowd would lock eyes with me. They knew. They could see it in my eyes that I wanted to enter, and they used that to their advantage. But alas, I couldn’t cave to my desire to stick my feet in a bucket of fish. I had places to go, people to see. The fish spa…would wait.

And then the end of my Summer arrived, and I found myself full of the usual bout of end-of-vacation blues. I didn’t want to leave the crystal-clear Cretan waters, the sunshine, and the like. I didn’t want to give up gyros and freshly cooked lamb. I was in a slump, and only one thing could lift my spirits: a final high note, one last ride, one final experience that would be the cherry on top to my Summer. The fish spa’s hour had come. That afternoon, my family and I headed to the fish spa, not quite sure what we were in for, but aware enough that we were going to have…a time.

Let me start by saying, don’t wear a dress to the fish spa. Climbing awkwardly up a bench that’s just a little too high for you, only for you to need to scoot down the bench to your allotted tank, makes a dress a hindrance. Secondly, definitely go with other people. Bring friends, family, distant cousins, acquaintances you made on your cruise, your yiayia, what have you. It is so much more fun going with people than by yourself. Not only does it distract you a little from the agonizing tickling sensation around your feet, it is the highest form of entertainment. I have three or four videos stored forever in my phone, which I watch sometimes when I’m feeling down, of my mother on the verge of screaming as the fish tickle her relentlessly. My brother mocks her mercilessly, bragging about how the fish’s tickling hasn’t troubled him in the slightest, while my sister and I have cast aside decorum and burst into uproarious laughter. Two random strangers in the video stare at us like we have grown three heads. It’s one of my favorites.

Pictured: my friends and family suffering at the behest of my whimsy

I was aware the feeling would not be…comfortable, but I wasn’t prepared for how strange it would feel. The farther up your leg the fish latch onto, the easier it is. They’re tolerable, those fish, the chill dudes of the tank. I liked them. They didn’t activate my fight or flight response. The fish that latched on to the top or sides of my actual feet were on thin ice. There was definitely a strong sense of discomfort produced by their presence, but those weren’t the ones that sent me into peels of tickle-induced laughter. That honor went to the little bastards who targeted my toes. If you’ve ever wanted to know just how strong your stoic endurance can last, buy yourself a fifteen-minute session at a fish spa, and see how long you can keep a straight face. Extra points if you can keep yourself from squirming. I think the hardest part of the whole thing was forcing my legs to stay still, instead of kicking them about like instinct demanded. But I survived, as did my poor mother, who vowed to never visit a fish spa again.

I’m suffering, but I’m also living my best life

I didn’t stick around for a manicure, which was one of the many other spa services Doctor Fish offered, but the next Summer I visited Crete, I went back to the spa twice. What can I say? There’s a satisfying kind of schadenfreude that comes from bringing your friends to a torturous fifteen minutes at the fish spa.

Oh, and my skin? Perfectly exfoliated. Beauty isn’t pain…it’s a swarm of tickling fish.

 

By Katarina Kapetanakis 

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There’s Usually Money in The Banana Stand: The Hidden Gem Near Vai Beach

I am not a person who usually craves bananas. Maybe I just tend to contain the recommended daily dose of potassium naturally, and have never needed to seek it out from an outside source. Or maybe I just don’t crave bananas. That’s not that weird. I enjoy a good banana milkshake every now and then, and those little fruit-shaped candies that come from vending machines that are shaped (but most certainly do not taste) like bananas are fine, and banana bread is great! But I don’t seek out bananas like I do other fruits, and I’m perfectly okay with that. This is just how my life is, I assumed. Some people are banana people, and some just aren’t. I fell into that latter category for no other reason than it just happened to be how life was.

My cousin said it was because I’d never had a decent banana.

“You have never tried bananas like the ones near Vai.”

“The beach?”

“Yes. There is a man who has a fruit stand, right before the turn to go to the beach. He sells the most delicious bananas in the world.”

“Those must be some bananas.”

“You have to taste it to believe it,” he said. “He always sells out early.”

“So, you’re saying that there’s always money in the banana stand?”

My cousin didn’t get the pop culture reference, but that was alright with me.  I wasn’t exactly foaming at the mouth for those curvy yellow fruits, but I didn’t mind taking fresh fruit to the beach. I was also very excited to visit Vai, which I had heard was an incredible beach, but is, alas, a story for another time. If you think I can’t tell an entire story about a banana stand and how the banana man thwarted me, you’d be wrong. So wrong.

The drive to Vai was about an hour and a half from where I was staying on the island of Crete, enough time for me to observe the beauty of the natural landscape of the place, and take some blurry photos on my phone. I slumped back into my seat after about fifteen minutes of failed photography, (though I guess, with the right filter, it could have been hipster-Instagram worthy), and closed my eyes. Car rides longer than 20 minutes will put me right to sleep, and the lull of the van as we rose and fell and curved with the land was the perfect sedative. I felt blissfully at peace, with the sunlight floating through the crack of the open window; if I had been a cat, I couldn’t have been happier.

The car eventually slowed, causing me to stir and look out the window, expecting to see palm trees and a wine-dark sea…and instead, saw a dirt road, and to the left of me, a shack. Or maybe a stand, but a stand that was larger than usual, of questionable structural integrity. It looked as if it had been painted at some point, but had definitely seen better days. Two or three different families were standing around, picking up fruit and asking an elderly man (who was sitting behind the stand) questions. My cousin, seeing I had arisen from my slumber, handed me some euros and told me to buy some of the bananas.

“Wait…why me? I don’t speak any Greek.”

“That’s okay, lots of tourists stop here. You’ll be fine.”

I looked around at the shabby stand and found myself doubting very highly that tourists frequented this place.

“But how many bananas should I get?”

“I don’t know. Try to get a kilo.”

“That sounds like…a lot of bananas…”

“It’s not really that much.”

“I think I should—”

“Just go get the bananas,” said my sister, who up until now had been quietly sitting in the back seat, minding her own business. She was in the part of the car that didn’t have quite as good air circulation as the rest of us, and was eager to get the bananas and get into the water. I felt like telling her to get out of the car and buy the bananas if she wanted them so quickly, but I sighed, put on my brave face, and approached.

The “conversation,” if you could call it that, was as awkward as I had expected it to be. I didn’t really know how to ask for a kilo of bananas with any fluency, as the Greek vocabulary in my arsenal consisted of “γεια σας”, “Καλημέρα”, and “κοτόπουλο” (due to me temporarily owning a pet chicken while on Crete, but that is a tale for another day). But the man running the stand knew enough to get my money, and I successfully made off with maybe 6 or 7 bananas, noticeably less than how many bananas made up a kilo in my mind. It was of no consequence: the fruit was purchased, the bananas were gained, and finally we could continue on to our beach day.

The beach was a wonderful time, with soft white sand, clear water, and sunshine galore, with a gorgeous palm forest stretched out behind me and to the left of me. I felt like I was becoming one with the beach as I let myself cook in the hot rays, and I wondered how feasible life would be as a tent-dwelling beach bum, when my musings were interrupted by my cousin handing me a banana. I was still skeptical of these bananas tasting anything other than how bananas normally taste, but I obliged him, and realized without question that I had tasted forbidden fruit. My cousin may have had a point when he told me I’d never had a decent one. These were sweeter than the bananas back home, so much so I’d almost classify them as being rich, and yet I felt refreshed after I ate them. They were the perfect complement to a day at the beach. They simply tasted like Summer.

I had to have more.

When we were packing up the car with our damp towels and beach covers, I asked my cousin if it wouldn’t be too much trouble to stop once more at the stand.

“I don’t know if he’ll have any left, it’s late in the day.”

I had not considered this, but by then my thoughts were consumed with the primal, caveman-like desire of “obtain more bananas.” I had to try, damn it. I had to try. My cousin shrugged, and two minutes later he once again pulled into the makeshift ‘parking lot’ of the fruit stand. I got out of the car with the desperation of someone trying to hurry up and abscond with the last bits of fruit in a shop’s possession while poorly disguising said desperation by trying and failing to check their speed. I glanced at the place where the bunches had been hanging before: success! There were two bunches left! I sped-walked over to the Banana Man, and asked him if it wouldn’t be too much trouble to buy his remaining stock.

“No, I can’t.”

I wondered if they had been sold, but the answer was…much more perplexing to me.

“I cannot sell them to other people if you buy. I lose money.”

In my mind came a flurry of thoughts that I had neither the ability or knowledge to convey. But if you sell all your bananas to me, you make the same amount of money that you were going to make if you sold them to other people. I just…I want to buy your bananas.

“Okay…can I have half of them?”

“Half?”

“Ah damn—can I take just these?” I said, gesturing to one bunch.

“No, I’m sorry. I need to sell to other people, or I make no money.”

But—but I’m still giving you the same—please just let me buy your bananas.

“Can I have three more bananas?”

He shook his head.

“Two more?”

He shook his head again, and I heard the desperation creep into my voice.

“One banana?”

You can probably guess how that ended. I looked around at the stretch of empty road, and at the only other people at the stand, a Dutch family that were examining some dragon fruit that quite frankly also looked just as good. But I couldn’t leave now. I couldn’t be thwarted by the Banana Man. How can you get a customer hooked on your product and then deny them another purchase? The gears in my head turned and clanked about as I tried desperately to string “γεια σας”, “Καλημέρα”, and “κοτόπουλο” into a sentence that would convey how badly I wanted, nay, needed, those bananas. But while I struggled and tried to make the pieces of this grammatical conundrum fit, the Dutch family glanced at, admired, and purchased the lovely bananas right out from under me, Banana Man smiling the entire time.

My eyes narrowed, my mouth opened just a tad, and in my mind, I could not help but wonder if it had indeed been personal. None of it mattered though. I was left banana-less, and, bereft, I turned back to the van, where my cousin looked at me, confused.

“I thought you were going to buy more?”

“I tried.”

“What do you mean?”

“He wouldn’t sell them to me. He said he would lose money if I bought them all because he couldn’t sell them to any other beach-goers.”

“Oh. Yeah, that makes sense.”

I couldn’t do anything but gape at him, so I did for a brief time, wondering just whose side my cousin was on here. We could be eating bananas right now. Beautiful, sweet, magical bananas. The best damn bananas in the world. And yet…here we were…empty-handed. And empty in soul. Had I made some sort of pact with an otherworldly banana salesman who operated on rules based in a supernatural plane and not our own? Was I now paying for my pride, my belief that bananas were nothing special, until some Greek trickster banana god thought I should be punished for my folly? Maybe. Probably. I like to think so.

So, if you’re planning on taking a trip to Vai, and you come across a lonely looking fruit stand of questionable integrity, with maybe three other people clustered around some bananas…make a stop. Buy some bananas. Enjoy them. And don’t, whatever you do, take them for granted.

 

By Katarina Kapetanakis

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Cuisine

Sashimi Rollin’…They Hatin’: Crete’s Unexpected Treasure

When my cousin told me, out of the blue, that he had found the best sushi I would ever taste, I did something many of you would consider to be…rude.

I laughed in his face.

After all, when I say the Greek islands, does Asian cuisine come to mind? No, it doesn’t! The kind of fish you’d find in the town of Heraklion is not the same style as that you’d find in Tokyo. Frankly I figured I wouldn’t taste anything but lamb, chicken, and gyros for several more weeks. I had planned to hit my favorite sushi restaurant the very day my plane would touch American soil again, where I would treat myself to salmon sashimi, a tuna tartar, maybe some tamago, and the like. I loved the Cretan palate, but I would be lying if I said I didn’t dream of the occasional volcano roll. So how could I expect the Greeks to enjoy the taste of raw fish, since every other restaurant I’d been to (though their fish was delicious), cooked theirs? I wasn’t under any impression that there was a market for sushi on Crete.

“Trust me. You’ve never had sushi like this.”

“I’ll believe it when I taste it,” I said.

My cousin didn’t seem to understand my skepticism. My siblings, who were just as Americanized as I, couldn’t understand how our cousin thought that he had found sushi on the island. My brother rolled his eyes and was ready to write off all my cousin’s protestations. My sister wanted to take the risk, but my brother and I figured this was due to a desperation for food that wasn’t lamb. Finally, our curiosity overcame our trepidation we had over trying whatever the Greeks thought sushi was, and we decided to call up our cousin and have ourselves a culinary escapade.

We drove about 45 minutes to the seaside town of Chersonissos (or Hersonissos, depending on who you ask), a place that, for me at least, reminded me a little of Hollywood beach in South Florida. For those that haven’t had the pleasure, picture a cozy but commercial seaside town, where the nightlife is more like a comfortable party than an all-out bacchanalia, where the restaurants all have gorgeous views of the sea, and people on motorcycles riding on paths that probably shouldn’t allow motorcycles, but do anyways. It’s a place that gives off a calm and pleasant atmosphere, one that satisfies anyone looking for a party while at the same time giving those who just want a nice dinner their space. Never had I seen the personification of a happy medium in a physical place. It was quite nice, and, as I was to learn, a greatly appropriate place for a sushi restaurant on a Greek island.

The restaurant is named Kymata Sushi, owned and run by a wonderful visionary named Christos, who was inspired while on business in Japan to bring the wonder of sushi to his home. His other profession, that of high-end jewelry store owner, has influenced his passion. The sushi he has helped to bring to this country is, quite simply, a work of art, as seen on the screens on the walls above the restaurant that show his beautiful jewelry morphing slowly into intricately rolled pieces of sushi. It was a little entrancing, and I couldn’t help but allow my mouth to water just a little.

“Wait until we order,” my brother said. “Just…wait.”

My brother takes his sushi very seriously. He can down four to five rolls of sushi (with some pieces of sashimi here and there) in the same time it takes a normal person to eat one roll with maybe an appetizer. It really is an impressive thing to witness, almost like a free Vegas magic show: watch this pound of tuna disappear before your eyes in 3…2…you get the point. His litmus test was a tad more precise than mine, and so we agreed to order a wide variety, to my cousin’s distress.

“Are you sure you’ll be able to eat all of that?” he asked, wondering just what we were feeding my brother in America, who was tall and thin and didn’t look as if he was physically capable of eating an entire kitchen. My brother’s face was stone. He wasn’t there to play games…he was there to eat sushi.

Our waiter took our order, and after some pleasant conversation with some of the staff and the owner, and some complimentary hors d’oeuvres, our sushi came. We think, in retrospect, that the waiters stuck around because they simply couldn’t believe my brother would be capable of eating, though a more realistic explanation is that they were the most attentive staff I’d seen in a while. I don’t think my water glass was emptied once that night.

But the sushi was a marvel. It was beautifully presented, as if Poseidon himself had wrapped up his treasures and presented them to us on a plate. Our eyes wide, we couldn’t help but drool at the colorful array before us, filling the table, and making us just a little unsure of how much, in our hubris, we had ordered. The taste test, however, was still before us. We gazed at my brother, who had assumed the position of authority, and waited with bated breath as he lifted the first piece of sushi to his lips. The air went out of the restaurant. You could have heard a fish bone drop.

Our cousin, as you probably guessed, was right: the sushi was the most delicious we had ever tasted. My brother’s eyes rolled back into his head, enraptured, and my sister, usually a proponent of sharing from other people’s plates, decided to start hoarding her own. I had to confess to my cousin that we ugly Americans were eating our hats. This was, in fact, the best sushi I’d ever had, and my brother concurred. He devoured 30 pieces of sushi, 12 pieces of sashimi, and an entire bowl of salmon tartar. He thanked our cousin for showing us the restaurant, and then walked off into the night, his thirst for sushi officially quenched. What a hero.

So if you are searching for a break in between the traditional Cretan fare, look no further than the small, lively town of Chersonissos. Look for a clean, well-lit place, known as Kymata, and enjoy some of the best sushi you’ll ever have in your life.

Say hello to Christos for me.

By Katarina Kapetanakis 

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Destinations

Holes in the Wall: Discovering Hidden Gems in Heraklion

None of what happened that day would have occurred if my sister was not an artist.

My family was spending the summer on the island of Crete, and it was one of the few days we weren’t attempting to do something together. Something about the very concept of the Family Vacation necessitates that every second of every day while out and about must be spent with the group as a whole. This is all well and good, for the most part, up until the point where you’ve found it may be better to take a day to be individuals instead of a cohesive family unit, for the sake of the continued family’s cohesion. You could consider it a vacation from the vacation, if you so choose. My sister, the aforementioned artist, wanted to spend her day drawing and painting some of the landscape, a noble endeavor that required art supplies that she, alas, did not have on her. Not to worry, however: a cousin of ours who lived in Heraklion knew exactly where to go. Since this was the day we’d mutually agreed to split up and explore, the rest of our family did not tag along. But I was curious, and figured a walk around the city would do me good. I happen to believe one cannot be bored in a city, and right when one believes there is nothing new left to experience, you stumble across a happy accident.

“It’s just down this street, until you hit the traffic lights. Then turn left. You cannot miss it, it’s, maybe, two blocks? Yes, two blocks away,” our cousin told us, and abruptly drove off, leaving us to our own devices. It seemed simple enough; go forward until you spot the traffic light. How hard could it be?

Well, as it turns out, it was very hard. There wasn’t a traffic light to be seen.

This was a pretty interesting corner, though.

I wanted to take a couple exploratory turns, every so often, but my sister, (a stickler for directions), wanted to keep going in the general direction of ‘straight,’ much to our misfortune. You see, for those who don’t know how the roads that are next to the city center work, they tend to ‘fan’ out, leading perambulators in a diagonal direction away from the center of town. We didn’t find out until we hit the coast, but the part of the coast that has large, Venetian walls showing the line of demarcation between the city and the rest of Crete. A happy accident in its own right, considering I had never seen the walls up close before, (unless you count quickly driving past them). You’d think that this would be the point where we’d want to turn back, and just retrace our steps? Well…

“Well, we’ve hit the coast. The road just loops around to the harbor. We can grab coffee there. Want to just do that?”

“Yeah, okay.”

Oops…

And so, in silence, we began to follow the road, more or less, with no conception of how far we were walking. We lost the road several times, (please don’t ask us how, because we still aren’t exactly sure ourselves), following the paths that the stray dogs take to navigate the back-ways. It did make for interesting photography, I thought to myself, but I hadn’t expected the hike and so had neglected to bring my camera. It’s just as well. I have a feeling that if I’d lingered in some of those back alleys for too long, the mangy dogs would have been the least of my worries. But we plugged on, thinking north, always north, keep north, (although we were probably going east), when suddenly we’d found the sidewalk once more, and could see the faint outline of the harbor in the distance.

“Oh hey—isn’t this that museum we keep seeing as we drive in?” my sister asked, pointing up to the yellow building that we’d found ourselves in front of.

“It is,” I said. I didn’t bother asking if she wanted to go inside. It was the middle of summer, we’d brought no water with us, and we’d been walking for about an hour. Inside meant air conditioning, water, possibly somewhere to sit. We were going in. Almost immediately, however, we decided to forego the plan to hit the café first, as we quickly became distracted by the wealth of treasures in the museum.

Image by the Historical Museum of Crete via their website. Sadly I neglected to take a photo of the building myself.

For those who’ve never been to the Historical Museum of Crete, (not to be confused by the more well-known Archaeological Museum closer to the town’s center), you owe it to yourselves to pay it a visit. Museums have always held a special place in my heart, a place that both quiets and excites my mind. This museum was a fabulous treat for me; it began as a general history of the island, which has been host to various cultural influences and conquerors, as some of you probably know. It is a fascinating history, filled with political intrigue and real-life folk heroes. From the Minoan empire, to the conquering Greeks, to the invasion of the Venetians, Ottomans, the reclamation of the Cretan people, this museum takes you on a journey through it all. There is even a section of the museum dedicated to the resistance of the Cretans against the Nazis, and it filled me with joy and pride to see how brave these men and women were in their struggle to liberate their island. (On a personal note, I was especially prideful to find two of my ancestors listed as members of this resistance. My sister and I were able to share a moment that, I expect, is rare to museum goers: seeing personal history and global history collide).

One of the beautiful exhibits in this museum!

If history isn’t really your favorite subject, you shouldn’t worry. It also plays host to a large amount of art, including some of the most beautiful Byzantine iconography I’ve seen in a single collection. And if post-Byzantine is more your style, you should make a pilgrimage to this place for the sole reason that it is the only play to see the two works by the master El Greco on display on the entire island of Crete: The View of Mt. Sinai and The Monastery of St. Catherine (1570), and the Baptism of Christ (1567). Though he eventually settled in Spain, Domenicos Theotocopoulous (a.k.a. El Greco) was born in Heraklion, and to see him honored in this museum is something truly special. The museum also features a large collection of the works of Nikos Kazantzakis, perhaps one of the best-known Greek writers, (and a Cretan native). For those of you who are bibliophiles, make it a point to visit this part of the exhibit. Books I had never even heard of adorned the walls, correspondence between Kazantzakis and his wife or his friends lie still under a glass pane, and I couldn’t help but admire the covers of the various international editions that all had such beauty to them. It’s a special place for those who love literature and exploring new cultures and voices you may not know to seek out.

A bright road ahead

 

We soon received a phone call from our family, who were all now well-rested enough to regroup and take on the rest of the summer as a family unit. They asked us to meet them at Lion Square, not knowing of our small odyssey that had led us through the side ways and byways of the city. We got lucky, though; the museum was only about 500 feet away from the center. Upon spotting us, our family waved us over to them, where they were enjoying a lovely bougatsa at our favorite café.

“Did you find your art supplies?” our father asked.

My sister and I looked at each other before remembering our journey had an initial purpose that, in the excitement, we’d forgotten.

“No,” she told him, and smiled as she reached for a forkful of pastry. “But that’s alright. There’s always the next trip.”

By Katarina Kapetanakis 

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