Crete, post the second
Sep. 9th, 2008 07:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hawkwing_lbMonday:
After a swim in the pool, we set out about midday to catch a boat tour to Spinalonga, the island which has played host to a Venetian (later Turkish) fortress and a leper colony, one of the last such in Europe, which was only abandoned in 1957.
It was your average tour boat with upper and lower deck, with part of the lower deck forming a galley and a long cabin. We ate from the boat's galley, which meant we missed the tour guide's spiel - I have to say, from the little I heard, it sounded more like he was in love with the sound of his own voice than anything else - so I had to do my research when I got home, since it seemed a fairly interesting place. Wikipedia solves many ills.
Arrived Spinalonga around 1330: we weregiven an hour before the boat left. It was hot, very hot, the sunlight like shards of burning glass. You enter the fortress through a tunnel beneath the walls, and in the courtyard beyond the parent found a tree with some shade while I went off to scramble to the top bastion of the fortress and take pictures.
It was a long, hot scramble. It's, seriously, fabulous.
The entire island is a fortress, walled along cliffs and shore. It's not a particularly large island, but it is wholly designated an archaeological site, under the care of the 13th Ephoreia. From the quay, you approach the curtain wall, and walk around a perpendicular turn to approach an entrance tunnel -- under a Venetian bastion. It's not as immense, as gigantically cyclopean, as Valletta on Malta, say; but it is impressively functional, high thick walls of yellow stone, and red, and grey, and looking up them is like looking up at Renaissance might and military power made manifest in brick and stone. And the sun, so bright, it makes your eyes water, makes the rocks glare, and when you touch them they're hot enough to hurt.
And the heat, and the dust, and the heat.
I'd have liked to have more time to explore: as it was, I only got up to the topmost Venetian bastion - and man, that was a scramble: practically climbing bits of it, and I only exaggerate slightly - and not down among some of the more preserved buildings, or the more recent ones.
I'm sure there are stories there.
One thing I've noticed, bringing a camera along - it's the first time I've had a camera with a practically unlimited number of pictures, even if it is a battery hog - is the distancing effect of the camera. One observes, rather than experiences.
Although that could be the heat going to my brain. It was hot, punishingly so, and that is one massive fortress, and I did not have nearly enough time, or water, to explore.
On the way back, we swam from the boat, in a bay between an island and the mainland. It was pretty good.
Pictures of the amazing Spinalonga start here.
Okay, fuckit. You know what? If you really want to see more pictures of Spinalonga - in fact, of my whole Cretan trip - email me, and I'll zip a folder and email you back. Because trying to put even a representative selection on Flickr is... probably not going to work.
After a swim in the pool, we set out about midday to catch a boat tour to Spinalonga, the island which has played host to a Venetian (later Turkish) fortress and a leper colony, one of the last such in Europe, which was only abandoned in 1957.
It was your average tour boat with upper and lower deck, with part of the lower deck forming a galley and a long cabin. We ate from the boat's galley, which meant we missed the tour guide's spiel - I have to say, from the little I heard, it sounded more like he was in love with the sound of his own voice than anything else - so I had to do my research when I got home, since it seemed a fairly interesting place. Wikipedia solves many ills.
Arrived Spinalonga around 1330: we weregiven an hour before the boat left. It was hot, very hot, the sunlight like shards of burning glass. You enter the fortress through a tunnel beneath the walls, and in the courtyard beyond the parent found a tree with some shade while I went off to scramble to the top bastion of the fortress and take pictures.
It was a long, hot scramble. It's, seriously, fabulous.
The entire island is a fortress, walled along cliffs and shore. It's not a particularly large island, but it is wholly designated an archaeological site, under the care of the 13th Ephoreia. From the quay, you approach the curtain wall, and walk around a perpendicular turn to approach an entrance tunnel -- under a Venetian bastion. It's not as immense, as gigantically cyclopean, as Valletta on Malta, say; but it is impressively functional, high thick walls of yellow stone, and red, and grey, and looking up them is like looking up at Renaissance might and military power made manifest in brick and stone. And the sun, so bright, it makes your eyes water, makes the rocks glare, and when you touch them they're hot enough to hurt.
And the heat, and the dust, and the heat.
I'd have liked to have more time to explore: as it was, I only got up to the topmost Venetian bastion - and man, that was a scramble: practically climbing bits of it, and I only exaggerate slightly - and not down among some of the more preserved buildings, or the more recent ones.
I'm sure there are stories there.
One thing I've noticed, bringing a camera along - it's the first time I've had a camera with a practically unlimited number of pictures, even if it is a battery hog - is the distancing effect of the camera. One observes, rather than experiences.
Although that could be the heat going to my brain. It was hot, punishingly so, and that is one massive fortress, and I did not have nearly enough time, or water, to explore.
On the way back, we swam from the boat, in a bay between an island and the mainland. It was pretty good.
Pictures of the amazing Spinalonga start here.
Okay, fuckit. You know what? If you really want to see more pictures of Spinalonga - in fact, of my whole Cretan trip - email me, and I'll zip a folder and email you back. Because trying to put even a representative selection on Flickr is... probably not going to work.
