Tuesday, May 04, 2010
Hello!
Greetings from Iraklion, Crete! (Yes, that is spelling #3, just to add to the confusion!!)
Up with the alarm clock about 6, as we wanted to get to Knossos, the most famous of the Minoan palaces when it opened at 8 a.m. (Not only is this my idea, but was mentioned in several guide books as well!) Down for breakfast at 7:15 a.m. Very nice variety of choices to eat – you could go with the cold meats and cheeses like the German, or full English like the Brits, or Greek, with vanilla custard and yoghurt and dry goat cheese (which was delicious). R opted for the cheese and bread; I had cheeses, bread, ham and salami. The only thing that wasn’t excellent were the juices – could that possibly have been TANG? Sure tasted like it, at any rate!
For anyone who has not followed our blogs before, (as I’m sure everyone who has already knows!) I have something called “laundry issues.” So yes, dear readers, I have been thinking about laundry ever since we got here! The fact that we have a week’s worth of clean clothes has NOTHING to do with it! Asked at the desk and found that they do have a service – but at 2 Euros per pair of socks, and 5.50 Euros per T-shirt – ridiculous! So…will NOT be having laundry done by the hotel…
Out about 7:45 a.m. for the car – and yes, it did involve two of the hotel staff moving other cars so we could get ours out. Note to RRZ: This is beginning to resemble Taormina, although this time our car seems to move around quite a bit! It took a couple of times around the block for us to get headed in the right direction – back toward the airport, then turning south inland. We didn’t get to Knossos until about 8:10 a.m. but we were able to park right next to the front gate, and nobody was in sight! In fact, we had the palace basically to ourselves, except for workers – it was amazing!
We had the “Blue Guide to Crete”, which has an excellent tour of the palace, and the really good signage was done in both Greek AND English! It was GREAT! After about half an hour, we noticed that groups were beginning to come in, but fortunately, we had enough of a head-start that we didn’t run into anybody else until the very end of the palace!
Knossos has been occupied from the Neolithic to the early Byzantine times – a span of about 8000 years! It is a very interesting site, as it was excavated at the beginning of the 1900’s by Sir Arthur Evans, the director of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England. During the work, Sir Arthur decided that he wanted to literally reconstruct some of the spaces into what he felt they originally looked like. Therefore, there are full modern staircases and door posts/lintels and columns set up in various places, as well as full reconstructions of various frescos – according to modern archeologists, based on very little “fact” and much more on Sir Arthur’s imagination! At any rate, the site was very interesting and while it was nice and sunny, because it was so early in the day, it was very pleasant to walk about. However, by the time we got back to the entrance gate, there was, literally, a MOB scene! Bus load after bus load …just amazing! Felt it was time we should leave – about 10:30 a.m.
After picking up a Coke and some water, we headed out and toward Archanes and another archeological site, Phourni. Oh yes, stopping to get gas along the way! Turns out that when we picked up the car, they said “the gas tank is ¼ full so when you return it – make sure it is ¼ full!” Oh well! Headed toward Archanes, but found that their museum was closed. Headed up to the Phourni site – several miles of gravel and dirt roads, very rough – only to finally arrive and find that yes, this too was closed! Not sure if this is the norm or if it is tied into the Greek austerity measures…Fortunately, the scenery was superb – small houses on plots of land planted with olive groves or grape vines. Just lovely!
Decided after getting back to the main highway to return to Iraklion and get to the museum today. Did make one stop – found a big electronics shop as R needed to find a cable to download maps into our GPS. I did the Greek (and Italian) trick – parked in a no parking zone and just put on my emergency flashers! Worked like a charm! Back to the hotel – it is very easy to find and get to – although I did have to park the car myself in a VERY tricky parking spot, but R gives great directions and “talked me through it.” Whew…Up to the room for a bit of a rest, R working on maps and me on a book. R having trouble downloading, as apparently there are interruptions on the internet access…he’s talking about going to a McDonald’s or Starbucks to see if the connection would be better. (Have seen only 1 McD’s so far, and 1 Starbucks.)
Finally headed out for lunch, toward the main squares in town. Found TERRIFIC walk-away pizza by the slice – lovely thick crust with ham and mushrooms – it was great! Walked into the central park and found a shady bench – great way to eat quickly AND have a show going on around you! (Talk about traffic! And these HUGE tourist buses!) From there we went to the temporary museum – and saw a wonderful selection of the most important Iraklion treasures. Lovely collection – the Phaistos disc, the bull cup, an old game board from the palace at Knossos – we’ve got some great pictures which we’ll include.
From there we stopped at a bank and then back to the hotel for a lie down…I had a lovely2 hour nap, and R is sawing away even as I type! Figure we’ll head out for dinner soon – the challenge will be to see if we are able to get past our Brillant restaurant here! It was SO amazing last night … we’ll see!
More later!
Much love,
m
x
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