timistravels

Dec. 27, 2012 (Spice) Dec. 29, 2012 (Grand)

The Istanbul Spice Bazaar is also called the Egyptian Bazaar.  It was built in 1664 so has a LONG history.  There are 88 spaces/shops that are in an “L” shaped building. There are also a number of shops outside on the W side of the building.   There is also an animal section towards the E side which was interesting to explore as well.    This bazaar was right at the base of the Galata Bridge, the bridge we crossed every day.

It is full of spices (of course), dried fruit, teas, cheese, meats, nuts, pickled veggies and olives!!!!   Over the last few years, to the disapproval of locals and visitors, some of the shops now offer jewelry, carpets and other Istanbul treasures.    The Grand Bazaar has many of these items so the feeling is to sale of items  separate.

It is free to go to the Bazaar and it is open every day, so it was good filler for us.  We also spent a lot of time walking around the streets near the Bazaar.  Next to it is the New Mosque which helps round out the point.

The Grand Bazaar was one of the places I was really looking forward to exploring, but instead it ended up being a bit overwhelming.   It is one of the oldest covered markets in the world and was built in 1455-56.   Over the years many disasters have happened to the Bazaar including fires and earthquakes, the last quake in 1894.

There are over 4000 shops and as you can imagine there are many, many, many people that visit it daily, estimated to 250,000-400,000 a day!   There are supposedly different sections of items including, jewelry (gold), clothing, furniture, carpets, lamps, leather, kitchen ware, pottery, etc. and I could see some division, but it is not as clearly delineated as you might expect. 

I loved looking at the different items for sale, but did not like the pressure to buy items.  I loved the smaller booths that were down some of the quieter arms of the big rows.  It wasn’t so hectic down some of the side isles.  I did not appreciate “hey lady look at ….” I really just wanted to look on my own without any pressure.     

I did get a scarf, but after much looking and much pressure.  Happily down one of the quiet rows we found a many with some great jewelry and I bought many pairs of earrings from him.  We also got one pillowcase and lastly I got some ‘belly dancing carves with bling on them’ for my Zumba class.

We also enjoyed the shops on the streets surrounding the bazaar, especially the ones that had antiques.  We got a ‘magic lantern’  (oil lamp) for our travel room back home.

Enjoy the pictures, as the views were my favorite things!

Dec. 24, 2012

I’d have to say that this was one of the highlights of our days on Crete.

this maps out the route we took. Highly recommend going through one of the gorges on the island! Well worth the trip.

It would surprise no one that knows us that we ‘happened’ up a brewery while on Crete.  We literally were driving down a road and saw a sign for it.  I immediately pulled over anxious to let Harry try a micro brew while in Greece.  However to our disappointment this is what the sign read when we got to the front door:

so sad that we could not go on a tour!

Brewery tours are possible every first Saturday of the month between 10:00 and 12:00 in the morning.   As you can imagine, that is now when we were there  so no beer tasting for us!

we could see that there was sunshine on the south part of the island and we were excited to get to it!

hard for a picture to show the gorge but it was incredible.

We drove from our place in Almyrida towards Rethymno and then turned inland.  We proceeded to the village of Alikianos and Aghia Irini.  This was the Gorge of Kourtaliotiko

the river running out of the gorge

(or so we think that is the one, there were not a lot of maps, so this information comes from the sweet woman, Yarniss that helped us with our rental car).  It possibly could have been the Selia Gorge, but regardless it was amazing!

rainbow!

looking back on Mirthianos Plakias

We even picked up a few hitch hikers along the way.  They only rode about 5 miles with us, one of them was Greek the other from England.  We took them to Mirthianos Plakias their final destination and we continued to Hora Sfakion a BEAUTIFUL coastal town.

looking towards the west

though we loved Crete it did rain many of the days we were there, so the sunshine made us smile!

It was Christmas Eve and our last day on Crete.  We stopped for dinner at a delightful family owned restaurant where we were treated as special guests.  We had fantastic meals, one lamb with yogurt and one lamb with onions.  They also brought us the best garlic bread we’ve ever had and then Christmas cookies for dessert.

best garlic bread EVER

What a delightful experience. (see post on trip advisor: http://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g2396903-d2362913-Reviews-Taverna_Nikos-Sfakia_Chania_Prefecture_Crete.html)

Hora Sfakion was a tourist town and for the most part closed down for the winter, but we had a nice time there and a great dinner!

We headed back through another gorge towards Almyrida and marveled at the drive once again.  There were many, many winding roads and a beautiful sunset as we got near the top.

We would highly recommend this drive to anyone that has a car and is interested in seeing some beautiful scenery.

look at those cuts into the mountain

up close view of the gorge

look at these winding roads, we did not think it was our road, but in the end it was!

amazing sun set

12/22/12 a.m.

For my birthday I wanted to do something extra fun (not that the entire trip wasn’t fun) so we headed to Terra Creta Olive Farm to watch how they make Olive Oil.  Once again, there was not another tourist in sight and we got the royal treatment including a gift bag with some olive oil and balsamic vinegar.  It was very sweet.  So, if you have ever wondered how olive oil was processed, I will try to decipher my notes and show you how it happened with some photos.

• Olives are harvested between Nov. and end of February.
• Most often (but not always) farmers put a net on the ground then use big rake like tools to hit the big branches and of course catch the olives.
• Once they are on the ground, the olives are put in burlap bags as soon as possible; each bag holds about 50 kilograms of olives.
• After the farmers deliver the olives they are immediately, or at least as fast as possible, placed through a machine that takes the leaves and branches out of the mix.
• Our tour guide is one of the analyzer’s of the olives and she helps decide which kind of oil each would make, they look at 2 parameters:

1.  How many olives per kilometer and
2. The acidity of the olives

• There are 3 containers that the olives are placed in once the acidity has been determined.  The lower the acidity level the better oil it makes.
• One of the things we learned is that after pollination, bugs might start to eat the olives and when this happens the acidity goes up.  They are trying to balance pesticides and finding organic ways to keep bugs off of them.
• The olives are then washed.
• Once washed they are made into paste
• Then the magic starts; they mix the paste with water, at 27 degrees C (80 F) to make the extra virgin olive oil.
• Bottling occurred in pipes that run underground to another building on site.

After the oil is separated, the pumas is reused for heating their building OR returned to the farmers to feed their animals.

This facility was built 3 years ago and uses solar power for lighting.

All and all it was a great experience and I am really glad we stopped in to tour the plant.  It sure is fun to travel on off season, you get lots of 1:1 attention.

12/21/12

“It’s the end of the world” NOT.  We survived the end of the world and live to see another day!  Decided to head the other direction on Crete and see how far we could drive on the National Road.

sheep in the curve in the road!

This road is very curvy and up and down following the N coast most of the way.  I would also echo that the drivers on Crete are the 2^nd worst drivers in the world.  The worst I have ever experienced were in Puerto Rico!  The speed limits are suggestions only and there are NO, Zip, NONE, No rules when it comes to parking.

We drove past Heraklion, the largest city on Crete, and continued W towards Agios Nikolaos.  We didn’t spend any time there but headed to one of the smaller communities outside of it to visit Lato, an ancient Greek ruins.

We took some curvy roads up to Lato and came to the front gate, where we almost screamed because we thought it was closed, as there was not another car there.  However, there was a lady that was happy to take our entry fee and talk to us about Lato. We were the only visitors all day!  We had the place to ourselves, other than a bunch of sheep.

the view towards the south

such amazingly old ruins

our only company at Lato, Sheep!

everyone was smaller in those days!

Lato was built in the 5^th and 4^th century BC.  It was strategically built high on the hills with a view of the ocean.  In 200 BCE Lato was destroyed.

12/20/12

We had a great day on our first full day on Crete.  Decided to explore the old town of Chania.  It was a dizzily day and a bit wet, but we had fun exploring.  After walking around the streets, we ended up the Municipal Market, which dates back to 1913.  It is in the shape of a + sign with 4 rows, each row kind of had a theme, but not totally.  There were a lot of different stores inside, but we ended up only buying some spices and tea from stores AND eating lunch at a great little family owned restaurant.     

My salad was a traditional cabbage, carrot salad, with a vinegar /oil / sugar dressing.  Harry had 2 different dishes, both chicken with many different seasonings on them.  Both stew like!

We then drove to the NW tip of the island.  It was amazing how few people or cars we saw.  It was almost scary that there was NO ONE else out there.  We went through Kissamos and returned by driving back through a mountain pass toward Chania. 

Crete is about 160 miles long and 37 miles wide at it’s widest.  However, the roads are not just straight and easy to drive on, to going 160 miles would take a LONG time.  It is about 100 miles S or mainland Greece and is the biggest island in Greece.  What surprised us most were the mountains.  I don’t think either of us expected such high mountains on this island.  The highest are the Idi Range at 8058 feet, the White Mountains at 8045 feet, then the Dikti Mountains over 7000 feet.  The valleys these mountains create are amazing.

Driving around the tip of the island reminded us of our time in Hawaii and the Na Pali Coast on Kauai or the Hana Highway on Maui.

We got some sunshine at the tip as well, which we appreciated.     

Dec. 18/19

We ferried from Athens to Crete on an overnight ferry.  The ferry was MUCH bigger than we thought it would be, it is basically a retired cruise ship.  We ride ferries often in Alaska on our ferry system and I always thought our ferries were quite big, but this one made ours looks small.

It was suggested that we buy the ticket for a specific chair so that we would be sure to have a seat.  In the end we probably didn’t have to do that, but it didn’t really matter.  We both found places to lie down and sleep, BUT the staff came by and woke us and told us we could not sleep in that area.  I moved and so did Harry, I was not awoken again, but they kept harassing Harry so he didn’t sleep much. We eventually made it to Crete about 6 a.m.

Our rental car was waiting for us and we were off to find Blazis House, our apartment for the next 6 nights.  It proved to be a bit harder to find that one might think.  We first stopped a town too early, as our directions said it was “right after Demitri Hotel,”  little did we know most towns have lodging with that name.    After some backtracking, and dead end roads we found our great apartment in the town of Almydria.  It was about ½ way between Chiana (the port town) and Rethymnon a very popular town with a wonderful ‘old town’ area.    It was a QUITE town with a lot of ex-patriots in it, but we didn’t see many people at all, the town was closed up for winter.

We drove to Rethymnon and walked around the old fort and old town for a few hours and at lunch.  Headed home to prepare for future Crete adventures.  It got dark by 5:30 so we were ready to crash early.

Our housekeeper had left a treat for us on our door, some homemade goat cheese, it was fantastic.

Everyone that we met this day wondered why we were visiting this time of year.  It continued to be a theme of the rest of our time on Crete.  They certainly were not used to guests in the winter.