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As October draws to a close, we here in America (and many countries besides) prepare to celebrate Halloween. Our bowls of candy are full in anticipation of hordes of costumed youth, with our houses decked in artificial cobwebs and plastic bats, orange and purple neon lights blinking in and out of focus. We go to parties or stock up on toilet paper for a night that revolves more around tricks instead of treats. Horror movies play on an almost constant rotation, and scary stories told by a fire are extra special this time of year.  

Greece, however, does not have a Halloween. For them, October 31st is just another fall day, and life continues on as per usual without a ghoul or gremlin in sight. But that doesn’t negate the fact that Greek mythology and folklore are practically rife with ghoulies from the get-go. From hundred-headed hydras to fire-breathing dragons, from the vengeful cyclops to the terrifying gorgon, the Greeks are no strangers to things that go ‘bump’ in the night. So on this special Halloween edition of our blog, let’s take a look at some of my favorite Greek monsters. ‘Tis the season, after all.

Vrykolakas

The Vampire has had a stranglehold on mainstream consciousness for an eternity, even before Bram Stoker debuted his epistolary novel Dracula in 1897. Since then, of course, Count Dracula has been portrayed in over 200 films alone, and the ‘vampire genre’ is certainly alive and kicking, even if their main characters aren’t. But before the rules of the vampire were established through this vast literary and film canon, there were earlier myths and legends from all across the globe of blood-sucking beasts who stalked the night. Though eastern Europe may be able to lay the strongest claim when it comes to the most easily recognizable vampiric myth, the ancient Greeks had one such creature lurking on the periphery of their folklore.

The vrykolakas is, in many ways, closer to a ghoul or zombie rather than our traditional understanding of the vampire. Instead of drinking the blood of its’ victims, the vrykolakas had a penchant for human livers, though most other bits of flesh would do in a pinch. Like their vampiric cousins, the vrykolakas were once perfectly normal human beings, but due to living a sacrilegious life, being buried in unconsecrated ground, or simply having the fatal combination of having red hair with grey eyes, they would rise from their graves to stalk the living. Terrorizing their former villages, the bloated, ‘drum-like’ vrykolakas brought with it plague, death, and fear. Some myths even describe the creature crushing their victims by sitting on their chests to suffocate them. Their appearance in the villages would often be heralded by knocking at front doors and calling out the names of old friends and family. To this day, many Greek villages hold a superstition that you shouldn’t answer the door until you hear the second knock, lest you be murdered and subsequently turned into a vrykolakas yourself.  Of course, you can pre-emptively prevent your family or friends from turning into a vrykolakas by burying them in consecrated ground, but if you’re too late and you need to take care of business, you must impale, behead, cut up, or cremate the body on a Saturday, (when the vrykolakas must rest).

There have been several archaeological finds to suggest that ancient peoples feared the vrykolakas enough to do something about them. Tombs from Cyprus, Khirokitia, Attica and Lesbos all have graves that contained bodies that had been ‘pinned’ down with spikes in their extremities to prevent the interred from rising from their respective graves. Some bodies were cut in half, or had portions of their limbs removed. But the legend of the vrykolakas isn’t as far removed from the modern day as you might think. During World War 2, Greece experienced a massive widespread famine that resulted in over 300,000 people starving to death. The resulting influx of bodies led to cemeteries reaching capacity, and the government decided to implement the use of mass graves in unconsecrated ground. This led to many distraught family members to preemptively behead the bodies in order to prevent their deceased loved ones from coming back from the dead.

So watch out for your next knock at the door. For all you know, it could be your last.

Werewolves

The Greek myths, though not the first to mention the concept, contain some of the earliest werewolf stories in our global consciousness. The legend centers around an Arcadian king named Lycaon and his fifty sons, and the resulting tragedy of what happens when you try to test the gods. Lycaon has a complicated history, as many mythological figures do, and there are a million myths that portray the king and his fifty sons in different lights, significantly altering the myth. However, the most common myth goes a little something like this:

After Lycaon had founded the kingdom of Arcadia and his sons, in turn, founded various cities that to this day still bear their names, the family fell into a state of debauchery and ‘nefariousness,’ disregarding social rules that Zeus himself had established long ago. In order to test the family, Zeus appeared to them as a hungry peasant, begging for food and shelter. Lycaon and his family opened their doors to him, but in a perversion of the laws regarding hospitality, proceeded to butcher the youngest of Lycaon’s sons, (or grandson, or even a complete stranger, depending on the myth you read), and used his meat for the meal. The reasoning for this act of cruelty? Perhaps it was to test the belief that any stranger could be Zeus in disguise, and wanted to deliberately disrespect him. Perhaps it was a baseless act of cruelty for cruelty’s sake. Whatever the reason, Lycaon had angered Zeus, who was horrified by such a blatant disregard for hospitality, one of the tenets that was so sacred to him. In response, he transformed Lycaon and all his children into wolves, and brought the murdered son back to life. According to Ovid, this transgression is what brought about the great flood from the myth of Deucalion.

Lycaon’s impact on the werewolf myth is nothing short of foundational. It is also said the king founded the festival Lycaea, a celebration for the god Zeus, during which a man chosen by lottery was forced to perform a human sacrifice, and upon doing so, took on the physical form of a wolf. For nine years this man wandered the wilderness in his new shape, only returning home and regaining humanity in the tenth year. This festival, which also included athletic games, continued into the 2nd Century A.D., but whether or not the participants were truly werewolves is…highly disputed, to say the least. Even the name for those cursed to become a werewolf, lycanthropy, comes from the titular Lycaon. Though the story may not be the most familiar to fans of this particular monster, you can’t ignore Lycaon’s influence on modern-day werewolf lore.

The Minotaur

Of the various monsters, ghouls and creatures found within Greek Mythology, I have a special place in my heart reserved for the Minotaur. After all, he’s practically a mascot for the island of Crete, and you can’t wander into a single store without seeing some reference to him, his sister Ariadne, or the heroic Theseus in some way, shape or form.

When Minos, king of Crete, chose not to sacrifice a prized bull to Poseidon, the gods bewitched his wife Queen Pasiphaë to fall madly in lust with the bull. Her sacrilegious union brought about a child with the body of a man and the head of a bull, and as he grew nothing could sate his hunger but the taste of human flesh. Humiliated, but unable to kill the child, Minos locked him away in a labyrinth under his palace at Knossos, engineered by the great inventor Daedalus. When Crete conquered the kingdom of Athens, Minos demanded a sacrifice of 14 virgins, 7 men and 7 women, to be sacrificed to the creature that lived within the bowels of his palace. This practice carried on for many years before the hero Theseus took the place of one of the sacrifices, and with the help of the Cretan Princess Ariadne and her magic ball of golden thread, found his way to the center of the labyrinth and slew the creature, liberating his people. Of course, there are many more intricacies of the myth to parse and chew over, but the thought of being trapped in a dark, mildewy labyrinth while a hungry creature chases me down to eat my flesh is just as frightening as any jump scare Hollywood can dream up. And the best part about the myth?  It’s possible to visit the labyrinth today!

Knossos is an archaeological site just outside of downtown Heraklion on the island of Crete, and only 20 minutes away from Villa Bella Mare of Wine Dark Sea Villas. First excavated by Minos Kalokairinos in 1877, the excavations were taken over in 1900 by English archaeologist Arthur Evans, whose controversial assumptions and reconstructive work have resulted in disputes as to their accuracy. However, it remains an important and ongoing archaeological site that contributed much to our understanding of Minoan culture that you can visit to this day! Though one can dispute the existence of the Minotaur itself, it’s a thrilling site to explore should you happen to find yourself on the island of Crete on Halloween. Who knows? Maybe you’ll find traces of a monster lurking around the corner, waiting to devour you.

With so many monsters in Greek mythology, it was difficult to pick just three to focus on today. I could write a book on the witches, ghosts, goblins and monsters that are alive and well in folklore and legend, but I think I’ll leave those for a later date. Or better yet, for you to discover your favorites for yourselves. In the meantime, carve a pumpkin, feast on chocolate, and tell some spooky stories by the fire.

Maybe even one of these.

By Katarina Kapetanakis

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

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

The words ‘Greek Literature’ tend to conjure up very specific images: Marble busts of Homer and Herodotus that sit in dusty shelves of a library sandwiching well-read copies of The Iliad and The Odyssey with bent spines and dog-eared pages. For some, the first thing that comes to mind is a beaten up school copy of Edith Hamilton’s Greek Mythology annotated with notes from a 9th grade English teacher. Still others think only of the great works of the first philosophers; these are the people who tend to store quotes by Aristotle, Socrates, Plato, and Diogenes in their heads that are then pulled out every so often to spice up a paper or impress friends at parties. Have you guessed what all these people have in common? ‘Greek literature,’ for them, begins and ends in Antiquity.

The misconception about where Greek literature begins and ends begins, for many Americans, in school. The countries you focus on shift in the chronological order of who’s empire collapsed first: Greek, Roman, British, American. Once in higher academia, students have the option of finally venturing into the cloudy world of ‘World Literature.’ This is a catchall term for any countries that aren’t America or England, and serves to lightly, (and I do mean lightly), gloss over literature from countries such as India, Kenya, West Africa, France, Columbia, or Japan. These classes, usually coupled into Levels 1 and 2, are meant to pique interest in the literature from these countries, rather than act as comprehensive lenses into their world. Years and years can be devoted to American literature from the 20th Century alone, whereas one elective class groups Gabriel García Márquez with Salman Rushdie and pats itself on the back. Mission accomplished.

Meanwhile, in the average American bookstore, what gets sold is once again a reflection of the almighty cultural timeline: the American and British greats are well-stocked, from Ernest Hemingway to the latest pulp novel. French authors are more often than not relegated to those published between 1600 and 1800, with a brief burst from the 1920s. Russian literature is often not found except for books from the late 19th and 20th centuries. If you happen to be looking for any authors from any South American country, your local big-chain-bookseller will gladly point you in the direction of 100 Years of Solitude, which you have already read at least three times over. And Greek literature? Well, says the big-book-chain, the latest translation of The Odyssey is right here. Or perhaps, if you’re daring, you’d like to try some Aristophanes.

Anthony Quinn Beach, Rhodes

All of this is to say that I was left with the distinct impression that the world left Greece behind in the cultural literary zeitgeist. This is patently untrue, of course, but it is what most Americans are left believing. How insulting it must be to think that the country that created theater would simply stop creating. The Greek people, and the many facets of their regional identities, did not stop the act of creation just because a continent across the ocean stopped taking notice of them. Greek literature has evolved over the centuries into many beautiful forms, still speaking to the human condition with as much truth and potency as they did 2,000 years ago.

This brings me to the Athens airport circa the summer of 2023. Due to several connecting flights I had not slept in over 24 hours, unable to catch more than five minutes of a blissful computer-like shutdown of my brain while curling up on a bench by my gate. When it became too much for my aching, nearly 30 year old back, I made the executive decision to surrender my seat in favor of window-shopping. On my side of the airport, most of the shops were decidedly out of my price range, luxury brands that were nice to look at but not to touch. What was left to me was a nail salon, food, and the airport bookstore, and as I had another two hours before I was supposed to board my flight to Crete, I figured a little once-over couldn’t hurt. In that moment I both celebrated the mass variety before me and cursed my inability to read Greek. There were swaths of books from every era, especially the postmodern movement, from Greek writers I had never heard of. Poetry books, folklore, dramas, and more were suddenly open and available to me, and I felt myself overwhelmed by the possibility of entering a new world of literature I had never entered. Still, I carefully picked out ones that stood out to me immediately, carefully laying them out in my carry-on bag so I could begin my reading on the plane. In that instant I fell down a rabbit hole, beginning a journey I’d like to share with you now as I take you on a sort of beginner’s course of the importance of Greek literature.

I first learned about the existence of The Erotokritos while sitting on a tour bus in Heraklion, days after my experience in the airport bookstore. Growing up I had a great fondness for ‘The Classics,’ and in my youthful ignorance I assumed I knew all of the important ones, as well as which were ‘worth my time.’ Reading Renaissance literature was a delight for me in college, and though I was in time able to combat most of the erroneous beliefs from my youth, I was still under the assumption that I had a pretty good knowledge of even the more obscure texts. So imagine my surprise when I learned that Crete had contributed the best example of Renaissance poetry that you’ve never heard of.  

Stavros Beach, Crete

Written by the Cretan-Venetian noble Vinsentzos Kornaros between the years 1590 and 1610, The Erotokritos tells the story of the love the titular Erotokritos has for the Athenian princess Aretousa. Like the more widely recognized Cyrano de Bergerac, Erotokritos woos the princess by singing beneath her window in the dead of night so he may preserve his identity, and she, of course, falls for him. The king of Athens disapproves of a mysterious stranger wooing his daughter by night, having no knowledge that the man in question is a favored member of his own court. Like many grand love stories of the era, our couple is separated by a murder plot, a time skip, mortal peril, and concludes with our hero testing Aretousa’s love for him with a well-placed disguise and a sincere yet dramatic declaration of love. And to top it all off, this epic poem has a happy ending. Though modeled after the French poem Paris et Vienne, the uniqueness of The Erotokritos cannot be denied by readers. It takes on not just a decidedly Greek interpretation on the value of true love and courage, but is also unmistakably Cretan. The dialect in which the poem is written comes from that island, and even more specifically, from Sitia. If I were a proper linguist, I would delve into the magic that is Eastern Cretan idiom, and how the author’s own Cretan-Venetian heritage influenced which words he used that were derived from Italy’s influence on Crete. This poem went on to inspire the poet Dionysios Solomos, the poet whose work Hymn to Liberty became the Greek and Cypriot national anthem. It inspired countless other poets and Cretan musicians, and was first translated into English by doctor and naturalist Theodore Stephanides, the mentor of Gerald Durrell. This is, by any right, a text that anyone could classify as ‘Important’ with a capital ‘I,’ and yet I’d never heard of it until I decided to take a bus tour on a sweltering summer afternoon.

This period of time is an interesting time for literature. During the same 20 year period it is estimated that The Erotokritos was written, Christopher Marlowe published both parts of Tamburlaine, followed by his adaptation of Doctor Faustus two years later. Edmund Spenser published books 1-3 of The Fairy Queen. Shakespeare’s Hamlet premiered to critical acclaim. Miguel de Cervantes published both parts of his epic Don Quixote, with a ten year gap in between each part. This small slice of the Renaissance produced immortal works that now permanently live on the periphery of our cultural knowledge. Even if you’ve never read these stories, you know enough about them to understand their importance, you know enough about them to understand the in-jokes. Why, then, is this seminal work of Greek (and, especially, Cretan) literature left out of the commonly taught canon of Renaissance literature? Why keep alive the Greek myths and stories from antiquity, but not this? Is it somehow less accessible or relatable than Don Quixote? Is it less emotional than Hamlet? Perhaps if a Disney executive or a Broadway producer had read it and slapped some show tunes onto it, more of the West would widely recognize this work. But it’s for the best, I think, that The Erotokritos remains a hidden gem waiting to be discovered by new readers, preserving its own deeply entrenched musical tradition as it continues to inspire poets, writers and musicians alike just the way it is.

Nikos Kazantzakis is perhaps the only name I’m going to reference that you might recognize. His two most famous novels, Zorba the Greek and The Last Temptation of Christ, have been adapted into critically acclaimed films that most American audiences would have a tertiary knowledge of. The film starred Anthony Quinn as the titular Zorba, and his interpretation left such a lasting impression that there is now a beautiful beach in Rhodes that bears his name. Cinephiles, at the very least, would probably recognize iconic dance scene in Zorba where, at the very end of the film, the titular Zorba teaches Greco-British Basil to dance in a final expression of mad exuberance. Out of context, this scene has been referenced and parodied to death, but within the film the dance expresses a bittersweet testament to the fickleness of life. I’ve been to the beach where they filmed portions of this movie. I swam in the water and looked up at the cliffside, I ate at a taverna just down the street from where Anthony Quinn stayed during the shoot. And yet, before this trip, I had not read a single thing by Kazantzakis. The novel is just as powerful, if not more so, as Kazantzakis’ prose elevates the story to a higher level. I found myself charmed and infuriated by the boisterous Alexis Zorba as much as Basil was, and the ending of the book was more emotionally potent than the movie had been, leaving me with an almost empty feeling I sat with for quite a while.

The Last Temptation of Christ was one of many of Nikos Kazantzakis’ explorations into faith, who Christ was, and what it all meant to be ‘Christ-like.’ The story goes into what it means to actively choose to assume the role of Messiah, what a normal life for Jesus could have been, and what surrendering to God’s will and ultimately rejecting the ‘last temptation’ meant. It is considered to be the most controversial work Kazantzakis wrote, as well as his most deeply spiritual, and for it he was excommunicated from the Orthodox faith. Audiences today still seem to miss the point of the work, with every facet of Christianity protesting not only the book itself but the film adaptation directed by Martin Scorsese. Like Kazantzakis before him, Scorsese was met with death threats, and the film is still banned in certain countries around the world.

Kazantzakis wrote 6 travel books, 15 novels, 8 plays, 2 poems, and 14 essay collections and memoirs. I have named 2 books. Two, out of his entire bibliography. I had no idea, before traveling to Greece, they even existed. I knew of Zorba and Last Temptation from an early age, and the copies of the books I own were easy enough to find. But I recognize that I am not the standard: many of my friends didn’t even know Zorba was a film, let alone a book. They assumed it was simply the name of a song. Kazantzakis’ work has been very important to me, and when I found the rest of his bibliography in a small bookstore in the port of Chania, it took everything I had not to walk out with every single thing he had ever written, at least those translated into English. Christ Recrucified, the story of a small town attempting to put on their annual Passion Play, is a powerful story about what a religious ritual means to a place under occupation. At the Palace of Knossos is a retelling of the myth of the Minotaur, but it examines it as metaphor for failing empires and colonialization. After all, the island of Crete was once its own mighty empire that, after natural disasters and apocalyptic events, became Greek. I have yet to work my way through all of the books I purchased, but each one connects with me in new and unexpected ways. There is something profound about his prose and the questions he dares to ask that are so quintessentially Greek, so quintessentially Cretan, that I cannot help but feel an attachment to him.

I visited his grave at the top of a hill that overlooks the city of Heraklion. I had never been before, in all the visits I had paid to the island, but something about this trip made me feel that it was finally time. It isn’t in a place you’d expect there to be a grave, and the walk up the hill is at time a little strange as you pass through well-paved but heavily graffitied stairs. The site is not hallowed ground, but as I stood in the quiet, staring at the large stone slab marking the place where he was buried, I could not help but feel that the place had a kind of serenity to it. Nikos Kazantzakis’ gravestone reads “Δεν ελπίζω τίποτα. Δε φοβούμαι τίποτα. Είμαι λέφτερος.” Translated, it means “I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free.” Though scholars have stated (and I am sure they’re right), that Kazantzakis meant his epitaph to be a larger reflection of his cynicism, I could not help but view it in an almost Buddhist lens: I have no expectation, and so I am free of it. I am at peace. I stood on the top of that hill, silently watching as the wind blew through the trees, coming as close to meditation as I ever have, and as close to a communion as I could have in several years. I don’t know if he would have approved of me treating his resting place as something sacred, but I couldn’t help but feel as if, despite the lack of a blessed resting place, there were clear traces of a kind of divinity.  

I came across Antonis SamarakisThe Flaw in that airport bookstore, hooked by the title that both intrigued me and made me wonder, ‘the flaw in what?’ The answer to that question is a sucker-punch to the gut, and one that made me seriously consider what it means to live freely. Set during a time of an unnamed fascist regime, The Flaw follows three characters set on a collision course that results in an over-the-top plan to cause one of them to confess to belonging to the opposition. We never learn what ideals the regime holds up. We never learn what exactly the opposition is working for, except of course to be in opposition to the regime. What see are glimpses into the humanity of the characters as they desperately try (and ultimately fail) to remain nothing but cogs in their respective machines. The Flaw is not an easy read: from jumping timelines to constantly shifting viewpoints, it is a book that one must pay their full attention to. The payoff, however, was one of the most satisfying things I’ve read in years, and left me with the bittersweet revelation that all totalitarian regimes like this are doomed to fail, so long as humanity endures. It was a powerful piece of literature that was a haunting prediction of the real-life Metaxas regime that took over Greece in 1936. Perhaps Samarakis saw the writing on the wall where he saw his country headed. Perhaps it was a general warning to the world to be wary of the rise of totalitarianism. Either way, the novel serves as a timeless testament to the power of a human bond, and how as long as we are able to recognize each other’s inherent humanity, there will always be a flaw in the regime.

After I finished reading this book, I turned it over to give the cover another glance. The edition I grabbed was the fiftieth anniversary edition, its minimalist design of the cover adorned with a snippet of praise by author Graham Greene. ‘Graham Greene?’ I thought. ‘Leading voice of the 20th Century Graham Greene? Author of Brighton Rock, The Power and the Glory, and The Third Man Graham Greene?’ I opened the front cover to find further glowing reviews from other authors I knew: Arthur Miller of The Crucible fame. Agatha Christie, Queen of the Detective Novel. I looked briefly at my new copy of Kazantzakis’ Christ Recrucified to see praise from Thomas Mann, author of the well-known Death in Venice. All these authors I grew up studying, respecting, admiring even, were paying their respects to Greek authors who I either knew the bare minimum or nothing. Where was the justice in that? Why were these stories widely circulated enough in these authors’ times, but not mine? I still don’t have an answer that satisfies me. Yes, at the end of the day, books are a commodity: books that make money continue to be printed. Books that do not are retired to the dusty shelves of a used bookstore that may or may not carry what you seek. I understand this is the way of things. But perhaps, if this mindset of what we value in literature could change, then maybe these important novels have a chance of staying relevant longer than the latest fantasy romance novel that has TikTok in a chokehold.

If you’ve stuck with me up to now, you may be asking yourself: what on earth does this have to do with travel? That’s a fair question, and most people who read this blog would generally prefer I’d stick to talking about beaches and historical points of interest, (which, in my defense, I mentioned one or two). But think about this: every time you’ve gone somewhere new, you’ve researched the language. ‘Where is the bathroom?’ ‘Can I get the check?’ ‘Where is the library?’ You do it as a courtesy to the people whose land you are visiting. You do it to serve as an outstretched hand, to show you are willing to go a step further to bond with a fellow human being, to prove that we have more in common than we have differences. Literature, especially literature created by and for the people of a place you plan to visit, adds a very important layer to travel. It adds an insight into the cultural mindset of a place, what art they find important enough to treasure and what values they uphold. Art is not and should not only serve as inspiration to travel. Art is why we travel.

So the next time you click ‘book’ on your travel website, take a moment to look up the writers, the poets, and the playwrights. Pick a short story or a poem. Read it carefully until it digests into your bloodstream, until you can hear the soul of the place calling out to you from within yourself. Take it with you when you go.

Rinse and repeat.

By Katarina Kapetanakis

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

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

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

I think that it would be a considerable understatement to say that this year has been…a lot to handle.

The world has, somehow, come to a complete standstill, and many of us are worried about how we’ll handle it all once the world kicks into gear once more. When I first started attempting to write this post, America had only been about a month into the quarantine. Who could have guessed that, with August on our doorstep, we would still be here? I didn’t know how to write about something like a Grecian holiday when everything has been ground to a halt. So today, instead of trying to pretend that nothing is wrong, or dwelling on how so much has gone wrong, I want to just take a minute to close my eyes, (feel free to do so too), and take a minute to relax and remember the good things.

Remember the heat of the perfect summer sun? I do. I remember feeling the warmth of it in my skin. I remember how after every trip to the beach, whether it was in Agia Pelagia or Ferma, that I had to consciously remember what it felt like to feel the sun trapped beneath my skin. It felt important then, because in my head I always wondered how long it would be before I would be back, how long it would be before I could experience that feeling once more. I figured that I was consciously treasuring these memories for snow days, when I would be assaulted by winter winds and grey skies. I can close my eyes and suddenly there I am, back on the beach.

And with the sun, of course, comes the sound of the waves. That soft but powerful crash upon the sand is music to my ears. The tide, extending its cool reach to brush against my legs, is a sharp contrast between the heat of the day. It’s refreshing reminder to me to turn over, so I don’t burn myself. Or maybe it’s a call to finally jump in and explore the water. I can almost see the waves crash against the cliffs in the distance, the coziness of the cove all that prevents me from the wild open sea beyond. The sand is course and rough, but anything feels better than being in bed. Maybe I walk into the ocean and I dive in, and I feel the icy feeling take over where the warmth had been. And of course, the water is crystal clear, the bluest blue you’ve ever seen. I haven’t seen beaches like Crete’s anywhere else in all the world, and I’ve been to many beaches. I swear I can see every shell under the water, every fish as it floats by. How beautiful they look as the light filters through the water onto their scales.

I feel the sun on my face as it pokes through the crest of the waves and I can look back onto the shore and see people. People. I love people now. I love knowing that other people can see what I see, can feel what I feel. I think after quarantine is over, I’ll never take people for granted again. I’ll never take being together for granted again. The smile coming from a human being that you love shines warmer than any sun or star in the sky. How wonderful it would be to see that again.

The way the wind blows through the leaves in the cypresses and olives as they grow, craggy and mysterious out of the cliffs, is a music all its own. Maybe you’ll hear cicadas hum, and maybe the smell of the picnic you brought to the beach is calling you back to shore. Maybe you can smell the tavernas cooking up the best fish you’ll eat all day. Either way you swim back, shivering with delight as the sun lays its hands on you all over again. Really push your feet into the sand. feel it slide between your toes. Never relinquish that feeling, of bliss and harmony with everything around you.

I miss touching the sand and complaining about the heat. I even miss sunburns. I miss the water and I miss all of it. I hope that if you miss it too, maybe this will take you there, if only for a moment. Maybe you’ll be able to find yourself floating in the Aegean, just beyond the shore, waiting to swim back and spend the rest of your lazy day with the people you love in the hot Cretan sunshine. When the world opens its doors, maybe I’ll find you there.

 

By Katarina Kapetanakis

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