Chania & Matala

Let it not be said that I traveled to Crete and didn't look for yarn. Of course I did. Lisa lived in Chania for a year and gave me tips about the yarn stores. I ended up buying some lovely Aegean blue and Sky blue DK weight cotton yarn in one of them. Near the yarn shop, there was another needlework shop with painted needlepoint canvases on the street. I saw this there and for just a moment, I wished I was patient enough to do such a big needlepoint canvas. I came to my senses quickly (what patience? I knit socks, isn't that patient enough?) and walked on through the town.

This ruin was right across the street from some shops and you can see the car parked right at the front of the photo. Just every day scenery?
Then, we traveled to Matala. This is a beach resort which used to be a smaller fishing community. However, they have these very interesting artificial caves, carved out of the cliffs by the Romans and used for tombs. The hippies discovered them (including musicians like Joni Mitchell) and in the '60's, they camped inside of the caves. Eventually camping in the cave tombs was outlawed and the caves by the beach became a park that one can explore. There are apparently other caves, and people who still dwell in caves near by. We swam in the Libyan sea and lasted only about an hour on the beach. Then the man who charges for umbrellas came by and instead of letting us pay to rent an umbrella, he chased us off. We went to explore the caves then and gave up on the beach. Greece was having a heatwave (40 Celsius) and anyway, my spouse gets sunburned and bored quickly with the beach!

However, said spouse found a great hotel about a half mile from town which we used as our home base the next couple of nights. We spent three nights there for a total of 114 Euro...about $50 US a night for the two of us. It included a big breakfast, a pool, and all the amenities one could expect...and each night we walked into town to eat at a taverna and watch the sun set over the beach and caves. In the next post, I'll show some photos of the mountain towns we saw while driving around the next few days. (Crete is bigger than it looks and husband dear likes to go lots of places on his vacation.)