Day 7: Traveling to the East of Crete! 9 July 2013

St. George Sellineri

Today we began our journey to a Monastery of St. George Sellineri. It is a small old church that was built in the 13th century. Entering monasteries it is important to dress properly. It was quite challenging to build it during that time. Also it uses the nature around comparing to light and wind. We did not spend a while lot of time in this area because we had to continue traveling East towards Sitia.

From here you can see the different style of Architecture compared to St. George Monastery. 

A design in the outside terrace of pebbles upright creating
texture and a more 3-dimensional design. 

Toplou Monastery was our next stop. This monastery was very different from the first. The style of architecture had a different feel. Even though it used nature around to cool and light the place. Toplou was founded in the 14th Century. It was destroyed several times but was reconstructed in a fortress like condition. The name of the monastery derives from a famous canon, which was once defended by the Turkish. Toplou means cannonball in Turkish. I would have loved to take pictures inside of the monastery but that is not allowed at all. The interior was beautiful with paintings on the ceiling and beautiful artwork. Just like the inside the exterior was just as beautiful. There was a lot of nature and artwork that was surrounding the structure.

Beautiful center courtyard with stone facade and wood decks and railings, also plants added to bring in nature.

The owner of the plantation who was very nice played us the
banana song when he first got out of the truck!

After the monastery we made our way to the Banana Plantation. This was not the first time I have travelled to a banana plantation. In high school I travelled to one in Costa Rica. It was quite different than this one. The first thing we did is travel up to the banana plants in the truck of the owner of the land. This was fun riding the back of the truck through his land. We got out of the truck and he began to discuss the process of growing bananas.

On the back of the truck!

The flower with tiny bananas!

A banana plant grows huge leaves and eventually a flower blooms through the stem of the plant. This flower contains the bananas. The flower holds moisture and water for the bananas to grow. I was not aware of the time it took to grow a bunch of bananas either. It takes about 15 months total. The owner of the farm has one main worker who goes through and keeps up with the land with him. I find this amazing! Only one worker is very little. When I visited Costa Rica there were probably about a 100 or more workers. But this was a place that sold outside of their country. The bananas here in Crete are small and organic. The owner explained the bananas very well and it was great to learn about how they grow. He also owns his own olives trees where he makes his own olive oil too.

Group photo with the owner :)

Vai Beach view from up on the mountain.

Vai beach it was interesting to the different to swim in and also to walk on. The rocks were a lot bigger and the sea was slippery because it was mainly rock. We discussed that towards the West part of the island it is more of a fine sand. In the other direction, the East, the sand is a lot larger rocks. This beach was beautiful and was part of the Monastery land. It reminded more of a tropical place. This could be because there were more palm trees and also the colors of the water. I loved climbing up to the rocks and looking at the beautiful view of the sea and also the surrounding area.

Group photo in Vai Beach!

Wild goats while driving though the area was fun to see!






INSTAP Study Center for East Crete was the last stop of the day. This was the first time I ever travelled to an Archaeological center. It was interesting to see the process of their findings and how they study about it. The most interesting piece of info I learned was that if they find one ceramic piece they can study and understand what the whole piece of pottery would look like then and they can form the pot around that piece.