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The coast to the west of Hania was the scene of most of the fighting during the German invasion in 1941. As you leave town, an aggressive, monumental diving eagle commemorates the slain German parachutists, and at Maleme there's a big German cemetery; the Allied cemetery is in the other direction, on the coast just outside Soudha. There are also beaches and considerable tourist development along much of this shore. At Ayia Marina there's a fine sandy beach and an island offshore said to be a sea monster petrified by Zeus before it could swallow Crete. Seen from the west, its "mouth" still gapes open. Between Platanias and Kolymvari an almost unbroken strand unfurls, by no means all sandy, but deserted for long stretches between villages. The road here runs through mixed groves of calamus reed (Crete's bamboo) and oranges; the windbreaks fashioned from the reeds protect the ripening oranges from the meltemi . At Kolymbari, the road to Kastelli cuts across the base of another mountainous peninsula, Rodhopou . Just off the main road here is a monastery, Gonia (daily 8am-12.30pm & 4-8pm; free; respectable dress required), with a view most luxury hotels would envy. Every monk in Crete can tell tales of his proud ancestry of resistance to invaders, but here the Turkish cannon balls are still lodged in the walls to prove it, a relic of which the good fathers are far more proud than any of the icons.
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