Agios Nikolaos, Crete

Today has been a bittersweet day.  We are anchored off the port of Agios Nikolaos, Crete.  The last time I was here was on this ship with Al. It was our last port before the end of our last cruise together in May 2019.

 Crete is the largest of the Greek islands and the location of the palace of Knossos, which was the seat of the Minoan society.  Since I’d been to Knossos on an earlier cruise, today I just tendered ashore and visited some places in Agios Nikolaos we visited three years ago. The town lies beside a small boat harbor and a  freshwater lake.  There’s a pedestrian shopping street whose shops sell the usual tourist trinkets one finds on most Greek islands.  I didn’t buy anything there but I did at a little shop on the waterfront.  Both times we’d stopped here, Al bought me a gold pendant from this place.  The shop was run by a goldsmith who handcrafted pieces with Greek motifs.  When we were here in 2019, the wife of the goldsmith told us her husband had died suddenly a year or two before.  I wanted to see if it was still open and to my surprise it was.  I wore one of the pendants from her shop and the lady (her name is Dena) recognized it immediately.  I sat and we had some coffee and a long chat. We had  a nice conversation about how life must go on despite a great loss. I bought myself a birthday present, a gold ring designed with a Greek meander pattern. In ancient Greece the meander, or Greek key, represented eternity.  Then I came back to the ship. It wasn’t an exciting day, but it was poignant and meant a lot to me.

                                                            The meander pattern

PS -  I could kick myself.  I should have thought to take a picture of Dena and me, but we were too busy talking.  Oh, well, next time.  Here are a couple of photos of the street - boring I know.