It’s my last full day in Chania and I’m exploring the Turkish quarter. I’m sat under a plane tree that’s hundreds of years old in Splantzia Square, from which one of Chania’s many occupiers, the Turks, used to hang rebellious Greeks. Even the poor old Bishop of Kissamos was strung up here while, according Chania’s Tourism Bureau (CTB), the occupiers sat below socialising, ‘smoking narghile, tobacco and drinking Turkish coffee’.

There’s nobody swinging from the plane tree today but there’s still plenty of socialising going on, and the warren of dark passages and narrow alleys that surround the square still stand. As does St Nikolas Church at the top of the square, pictured at the top of this post. It was built in 1320 and was the temple of the nearby monastery where Dominican monks hung out. It’s the only church in Greece with a bell tower and a minaret, which was tacked on by the Turks when they turned it into a mosque after the Ottoman conquest of Crete in 1645. It’s back being a church again now.

Like all of the city’s areas, wandering around them reflects the different periods of occupation and the mark that each has made. As the CTB put it, it can feel like you’re ‘timelining backwards’.

Well, tomorrow I’ll be timelining forwards. I came to Chania with the intention of chilling for a week and acclimatising, which I’ve done. But much as I’ve enjoyed my time here, it’s wearing thin. The old town and its various quarters is breathtakingly beautiful, steeped in history and blessed by amazing architecture at every turn. But, just in the week that I’ve been here, its beauty’s downside’s begun to show. More and more visitors have pitched up and the gentle bustle of the harbour’s morphed into a bit of a frenzy. The lights are suddenly brighter, the music from the cafés and bars has pumped right up, and that gentle evening waterside stroll’s started to feel a bit like elbowing your way along London’s Oxford Street on Christmas Eve, except a bit warmer.

So I’m off tomorrow on the 7.45 bus to Xyloskal in the White Mountains, an hour and a world away. I’ll miss this view from my window, atop an old Venetian townhouse, thought to be 400 to 500 years old by the owner, George. It used to be his grandmother’s home and the room that I’m in was destroyed by a German bomb in WW2. Nobody was hurt; she was down in what’s now the foyer with her chickens.

But that harbour’s buzzing now and I’m going where there’s just the sound of the cicadas and the sea. With luck I’ll have walked the ten miles or so from Xyloskal down to the south coast by tomorrow evening and I’ll post some more then, signal and fatigue permitting (I’ve a heavy rucksack).

Fun fact: the thumping beat of Chania’s harbour by night is no match for the cicadas. Just one of them, let alone an ensemble, can send out 300-400 sound waves per second.