We awoke this morning to the slow repetitive ringing of a single bell at the cathedral. It tolled for an hour, marking the first of the Orthodox Good Friday church services.
We spent our morning in, and had lunch before resuming our exploration of Heraklion’s Venetian walls.
Our second wall walk was far less exciting than the first, partially because the top of the wall ends up at street level in places, making it seem just like sidewalk with a stone border.
Nonetheless:
When we reached the Sabbionara Bastion, closest to the harbour (excluding the Venetian fort itself), we could clearly see the three stages in which the walls were built: Byzantine sun-dried clay brick, Venetian baked clay brick , and the smaller stones in the topmost layer laid by the Ottomans.
The water in the cisterns was visible to the naked eye through the grating over the arches on the left, but the grates are so tightly woven that there was no way to photograph through them.
Ted was feeling less than perky today, with a niggling sore throat, so we called it a day before reaching the Venetian Fort itself.
Since we’d had our big meal at noon (pasta with red pepper sauce, mushrooms, and chicken, cooked in our mini-kitchen), “dinner” was iced espressos and apple cake at one of the many bakery/patisseries on our route back to the hotel.
Our day ended the way it had started, with the slow dolorous tolling of the cathedral bells.
Rose and Ted’s Excellent Adventure 