Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Crete

Crete, where to begin. Surely first impressions at 6 AM with only a few hours of sleep under your belt is not the way to start things out! Upon disembarking from the ferry in Iraklion I was struck by the quality of light and the amazing blues and purples of the Aegean. After dropping our things at the Hotel, we struck out via tour bus (ugh) to the Minoan site of Tylissos, a 20-30 minute ride outside of the town. Tylissos is a 2nd palatial period settlement consisting of three Minoan houses arranged in an L shape. The Myceneans built a Megaron over house C sometime in the post-palatial period. With no tourists in sight it was pure bliss to wander through the maze of ruins, all in remarkably good condition (not tampered with by Arthur Evans). There were reconstructed pots sitting in the odd corner throughout the site.

Afterwards our guide took us the venetian walls and the grave of Kazantakis on top of one of the huge bastions. The Venetial fortifications are certainly impressive, though as gunpowder became more and more common it is hard to believe that they would have lasted very long.

We walked up the August 25 street, named after the day when the occupying Turks slaughtered 800 locals and a handful of Brits in 1898. This was the beginning of the end of the Turkish occupation and they withdrew after the inevitable international outcry.

After we checked into our rooms I went down to the Venetian fortress at the breakwater. This was a particularly interesting structure with cavernous chambers inside and marvelous views of the town from the top. The reverb in some of the gun galleries was astonishing. If I ever had the money I would hire out the fort and record drums and guitar there. It sounded like a much more focused cathedral-type reverb.

The next day we went to Arthur Evan's Knossus Crete Disney Land. For the uninformed, Knossus is perhaps the most important of the Minoan palaces. King Minos, creater of the Labyrinth supposedly lived here. It is a massive site, several hundred meters by several hundred meters. A British man by the name of Arthur Evan's began excavating the site at the turn of the century, and instead of simply unearthing the ruins, he decided on reconstructing large portions of the buildings on top of the actual ruins. Naturally one cannot have a completely clear picture of what the palace should have looked like from solely the ruins, and so Arthur Evans, using his powers of imagination, set to work. We have an idea of what Minoan palaces looked like from various coins and carvings scattered throughout the island, but these are not specific archaeological plans, and thus there is a certain level of imprecision that is unnerving at best. Evan's also attempted to reconstruct the various frescoes that would have adorned the walls. This sounds like an even more absurd proposition considering that all that remains of the frescoes are a handful of small chips that give no indication of the composition of the work in its entirety. Once again, Evans used his imagination. We ended up calling it Creten Disneyland. It was disappointing to say the least.

The next day we visited Pharsalos, Gortyn, Agia Triada, and Matala. Pharsalos was a smaller Minoan palace and probably belonged to the brother of King Minos. Matala is the big touristy beach. Tanner cut his foot open on the rocks, I had to clean the sand out with a syringe. The woes of being a certified lifeguard.

The day before yesterday we started our trek to Hania, by route of Falesarna on the extreme west part of the island. Falesarna was a base for pirates during the roman time and in order to curb their effectiveness the Romans dumped tons and tons of rocks into the bay to disuade ship traffic from entering. Ian and I climbed up the neighboring hill and found two shaft tombs dug into the side of the cliff. We then made our way to Hania.

Hania is another Venetian port. It is considerably smaller than Iraklion, but what it lacks in size it makes up in appearance. The old port is surrounded by a 500 year old breakwater interspersed with several gun batteries. The interior is bordered by an old rock jetty and restaurants beyond it. The one night we were there we went out to the mouth of the breakwater where an old Ottoman lighthouse stood and sat and talked, much as one would imagine six American students sitting under a 400 year old lighthouse would do.

Anyways, we were supposed to stay in Chania last night, but the Greek ferry workers decided to spring a strike on everyone and in order to not be stranded on the island we had to catch the last ferry back from Iraklion to Piraeus. The crossing last night was marked by incredibly heavy seas, and after having a glass of wine I was confused as to whether I was actually drunk and my equilibrium was off, or if the ship was potentially sinking. Naturally I did not sleep well.

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Down and out in Paris

Blog

So sorry for not keeping the blog updated for the Paris leg of my trip, it is 4 Euros for two hours of internet, so naturally that precious internet time was taken up by communicating with my dear girlfriend and parents.

Anyways… Paris, where to begin?

I arrived via train on the second, a full two days earlier than my original plan. I arrived at St. Lazarre and was promptly utterly confused and dumfounded on the exact function of the Metro system here. It took standing in a line for a full half hour twice to eventually get my five-day pass and proceed on my way to my hostel. I finally got a map of the underground here, and it struck me as rather odd that my hostel, which had advertised itself as being “conveniently located” was not exactly “convenient” and “located” rather poorly in the northwest of town, in what Larkin would call “The Hood.”

So I finally stumbled off of the packed Metro (such timing, I arrived just in time to experience the full force of Parisian rush-hour) at Hoche station and once again became utterly lost. This “conveniently located” hostel had “conveniently” given me incredibly obscure directions and I ended up having to harass a rather aloof kebab salesman to point me in the several directions it would take to find my bunk. Turns out the hostel is rather close to the metro, but as I would find out later, if you have any alcohol in your system, you are guaranteed to find yourself wandering in the opposite direction without ever being aware of it.

My hostel is not what you would call a “Youth Hostel,” rather it appears to be more of a geriatric holding area with space for the grandchildren. I quickly found myself being one of the youngest residents, which was quite a shock and contributed greatly to the alienation I had been feeling since my arrival in Paris.

There are quite a few characters that seem to live here. There is a presumably French male, aged unknown with dental work that would make a grown man cry. His voice is rather high pitched (I mean really high-pitched) and he appears to never leave the confines of the hostel unless he is getting food. I wake up, he is here doing nothing-in-particular. I come back around dinnertime and he is here, continuing the nothing-in-particular. One of his favorite pastimes appears to be the pursuit of unsuspecting young women. His game plan is based around the cheap 2 Euro bottles of wine he buys in bulk and the subsequent consumption by the victim of said wine. At one end of the spectrum it is incredibly amusing to watch, on the other it is rather horrifying. The fact that his voice is quite possibly higher in pitch than any of his targets is amusing to no end. I would write more about the others (such as the old man from the Czech Republic I am sharing a room with, but I doubt anyone reading this would care).

So I dropped my bag off at the hostel and set about getting a feel for the neighborhood. It is a predominantly lower-class area where the Turks are in the majority. There are many kebab houses and Turkish tea-houses and grocers. English, or French for that matter, is seldom spoken here. It is not the type of area you would feel completely comfortable wandering around late at night. I took dinner at a kebab house and returned to the hostel for the night.
The next day I awoke, and made my way downstairs for one of the most sub-par breakfasts I have ever had. The coffee was wretched, the milk for the cornflakes was room temperature, and the bread was rock hard. I sat down, and the girl across from me immediately tagged me as American. Her name was Eliza, and we ended up talking for quite a while about art, American tourists, the French, etc.

So anyways, I left the hostel around eleven and made my way to the center of the city. The object for the day was to see the Palais de Tokyo and the Modern Art Museum. The Modern Art Museum had acquired nearly all of the paintings from Malevich’s installation in the Last Futurist Exhibition. They had arranged the paintings just as they had been nearly a century before. I ended up sitting on the floor staring up at Black Square for nearly an hour.

The weather was pretty iffy that day, but I still managed to walk up and down the Seine a few times, taking the generic tourist picture of the Eiffel Tower. After the museum I think I only really did walk around for several hours. Oh yeah, I went to the Musee de Rodin and lounged about in the gardens. I made it back to the hostel just after dinner and went looking for a cool bar in St. Michel.

The next day… what did I do… Oh yes, this would be Sunday.

I ended up meeting Eliza again at breakfast and we took the Metro to the area just East of the Champ d’Ellyses and wandered around that area. The weather started to run rather sour and the Easter service at Notre Dame I was going to catch wasn’t until 6:00, so we ended up going to see Shutter Island. It was quite a strange movie, and when it was over we had to rush to get over to Notre Dame where, magically as if by an act of God, the weather had become quite nice. The pews were reserved for members of the congregation, so us proles were funneled into the cathedral and, just as quickly, out. Then we walked around the Latin Quarter, ate at a Mexican restaurant, and met Eliza’s Libyan friends from the night before at an Irish Pub.

The next day (Monday) I caught the train to Luxembourg Gardens and sat on the terrace overlooking the pond and read. The bookshelf at the hostel conveniently had 1984 as the only English book, and so instead of lugging my huge D-Day book around, I grabbed the paperback Orwell book. As the day wore on I ended up wandering around the Latin Quarter and then to the garden outside of the Lourve. I ended up sitting in a square watching Frenchmen on rollerskates trying to jump over a plastic chord. It was quite spectacular.

Tuesday… I tried to que for the Lourve, but the line was unbelievably long and it didn’t look like I would be any closer to the famed glass pyramid in a hour. So, as the weather was quite nice again, I made my way back to the Latin Quarter and resumed my wondering. I eventually found William Shakespeare & Co, a British bookstore near Notre Dame and spent a bit of time in there. Then, as with the trend I have been following in regards to the pleasant weather, I made my way to Luxembourg Gardens and enjoyed the sun and my newly purchased book.

Today I tried to get a decent spot in the line for the Lourve, but as with yesterday, it did not seem like it would happen. I made my way across the Seine and visited the Musee d’Orsay instead. At this point it is worth noting that I have gotten into nearly every museum for free or for a reduced fair by putting on my terrible quasi-English accent and claiming to be from the UK. Today was a double-whammy, both Musee d’Orsay and the Musee de Armee. Anyways, so I wandered the galleries of the Musee d’Orsay for a good half day before making my way to the Museum of the Army and Napoleon’s Tomb. It is rather shocking to see the astonishing proportions of Bonaparte’s sarcophagus in person. For such a small guy, he has quite a huge coffin.

So from this report it would appear that I had not really been to too many huge, touristy sites. As with London, I have found that getting incredibly lost is much more satisfying and interesting than hitting all of the big-box tourist sites. Once I got into the older, less visited portions of the city, I found myself enjoying myself infinitely more than if I tried to navigate the masses of humanity at the Eiffel Tower, Arch du Triumph, and so on.

Tomorrow morning I head to Athens! I need to do laundry, I smell rancid.