Souda Bay is a natural harbour near the town of Souda located on the northwest coast of the Greek island of Crete. It is a deep natural harbour making it an ideal location for a ship terminal.
Some history, there has been port facilities on this bay since ancient times, previously serving the city of Aptera. Aptera was founded in the 7th century BC or some 2,700 years ago and was an important city during the ancient and early Byzantine periods. Aptera was destroyed by the Saracens in about the 820’s AD. The Venetians then occupied this area in the early 1200’s up until about 1715. There were many attempts of takeovers from the Ottoman raiders and pirates so between 1570 and 1573 the Venetians fortified the Souda island. However the Bay remained a pirate infested pirate infested area during the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries.
The Ottomans did finally take over rule of this area after the Cretan Revolution of 1866-69. They built fortresses at Aptera and built the town of Souda at the head of the Bay as the new port for the nearby city of Chania. In 1913, events marking the union of Crete with Greece took place on Souda island and on February 1st the metallic Ottoman flag, was removed and replaced by the Greek flag on May 1st. There is much military history in this bay as well including housing of the NATO Maritime Interidiction Operating Training Centre. Today Souda Bay serves as our port for our adventures in Crete.
Our ship docked here at about 10am, an hour earlier than scheduled, which was nice as we were able to begin out private Cruise Critic tour a bit earlier.
We had a wonderful tour with Nona, our organizer. We visited an olive production plant, a distillery, a bakery and a cheese factory. It was named, the 7 Villages of Apokoronas Tour. Some of these villages were drive through and some were where these stops were made. The interesting and best part was that all these production places were family run and in cases over several generations. The “Raki” distillery still had the original still used by the grandfather and the olive factory had all the tools and machinery that was used generations ago. The drive itself was interesting and entertaining as we weaved our way through these villages in a van not really made for these narrow roads, many a close call. One of the other stops was to a newly designed, based on old Roman design, amphitheater built in 2013. This stop also included a visit to two churches built on top of each other inside the caves of cliff wall, the Church of St. Antony on top and the Church of St. John The Hermit on the bottom - incredible.
Our tour ended at the magnificent, Cliff edge Blue Restaurant where we watched the sunset over the bay and enjoyed some local Greek cuisine. As an appetizer we shared the fried calamari, Jan had the Sea Bass special while I enjoyed the seafood risotto. Fantastic meal with an unforgettable view. Got to love Greek hospitality, the bill comes with 3 little bottles of raki, so okay, a few shouts before we leave, nice.
I am writing this the next day sitting in the 23 degree shade of the promenade deck as we make our way to the Suez Canal for tomorrow’s transit, not a bad way to spend a Thursday. Some pics of our, hope you enjoy… It will be in a few parts, blogspot only allows for about a max of 40 per file.
Quote of the day, “As you move through this life… you leave marks behind, however small. And in return, life-and travel- leaves marks on you”. - Anthony Bourdain
Gangs all here, nice touch…
On board photographer, we told him “no photos”. Him getting us back, lol.
Olive oil factory
Granite grinding wheel from the old days, used with donkeys
Olive tree that is 2,500 years old, amazing
Olive oil tasting of course.
Raki distillery.
Grandpa’s original still.
With Nona.
Inside a local grocery store.
Original spring…
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