We've made it to Heraklion, the biggest city on Crete. As a favor to anyone that might be thinking about visiting Greece in the future, please avoid taking any G.A. Ferries. They haven't been updated since the 70s, are kind of dangerous and are always 2 hours late. Hellenic Seaways and Blue Star are great, though. And here we were, wondering why G.A. Ferries didn't even have a listing in the Lonely Planet. They should mention these things!
It's a bit weird to be back in a biggish city with buildings taller than 3 stories. Our last few days in the Cyclades were on Santorini, in the seaside town of Perissa. LP calls it a "small resort", but it's really just a few restaurants, a campground and a whole lot of black sand and basalt pebbles. And it was lovely! I've actually never spent a full day on the beach before, and it was really, really nice. Got to catch up on my brainless reading (lots of free falling-apart books at the hostel/hotel) and live my own little Corona ad. With Amstel. And with little black pebbles instead of sand, which are actually way better than sand because they don't stick to you and fall out of your sandals really readily.
We also found a restaurant (the "Ancient Thera Restaurant") on a back road in Perissa that makes just about everything tasty, and give out the house wine in carafes of a litre. JP got through 2/3 of the carafe on his own before he realized it was more than a regular bottle of wine, and that was after some experimental swigs of retsina, a Greek white wine with pine resin. (Retsina isn't so great. Must be an acquired taste, like ouzo...) There were also tiny stray cats, so we spent the evening sneaking bits of food to the little ginger one in the hopes that he would grow up big and strong and beat up the tortoiseshell that pretty clearly stole all his food. Poor kitty.
After that it was a very slow ferry ride to Heraklion, and a day of seeing all the historical sites in the area: the archaeological museum of Heraklion (with the bee pin!), the Minoan palace at Knossos, and the Venetian castle. Strangely, the Venetian castle was the most fun. No tour guides, not many tourists, right on the water and fun to poke around. There's ramps and stairs everywhere, ramparts on the roof, and a surprise cannonball storeroom where there's hundreds of cannonballs. Cannonballs come in different sizes (I didn't know that) and are really heavy. I guess they have to be. It seems like many of the museums in Greece are under renovation this summer, so the museum exhibits were relocated to a smaller room. Still cool, though. I was partial to the bull-head libation vase thingy, but most people like the crazy snake goddess. We spent almost an hour looking for a good goddess replica to take back to JP's brother's g/f. Most of them either had funny-looking snakes or a goddess with a face like a man.
Knossos was pretty disappointing after Delos, where the guides let you romp around the ruins and climb up buildings and hills after a short guided tour. Some moron called Arthur Evans decided that he could pour concrete and try to remake the palace because he happened to be the one that discovered it. Now everything there is roped off, and what isn't has been restored with signs stating annoyingly Evans-centric speculation (as if no one else has an opinion about what the palace looked like). Ugh.
We stuffed ourselves silly last night at a seafood grill on the waterfront, where I learned that mullet is not just a hockey haircut but a very tasty fried fish. Tomorrow we're heading to Rethymno, where we'll probably get a scooter and check out the smaller villages in the middle of the island. Apparently people there still use donkeys for moving stuff around and Greek macho culture is much in evidence. I'm more interested in the weaving and pottery, but am sadly limited by my 30L backpack.
It's a bit weird to be back in a biggish city with buildings taller than 3 stories. Our last few days in the Cyclades were on Santorini, in the seaside town of Perissa. LP calls it a "small resort", but it's really just a few restaurants, a campground and a whole lot of black sand and basalt pebbles. And it was lovely! I've actually never spent a full day on the beach before, and it was really, really nice. Got to catch up on my brainless reading (lots of free falling-apart books at the hostel/hotel) and live my own little Corona ad. With Amstel. And with little black pebbles instead of sand, which are actually way better than sand because they don't stick to you and fall out of your sandals really readily.
We also found a restaurant (the "Ancient Thera Restaurant") on a back road in Perissa that makes just about everything tasty, and give out the house wine in carafes of a litre. JP got through 2/3 of the carafe on his own before he realized it was more than a regular bottle of wine, and that was after some experimental swigs of retsina, a Greek white wine with pine resin. (Retsina isn't so great. Must be an acquired taste, like ouzo...) There were also tiny stray cats, so we spent the evening sneaking bits of food to the little ginger one in the hopes that he would grow up big and strong and beat up the tortoiseshell that pretty clearly stole all his food. Poor kitty.
After that it was a very slow ferry ride to Heraklion, and a day of seeing all the historical sites in the area: the archaeological museum of Heraklion (with the bee pin!), the Minoan palace at Knossos, and the Venetian castle. Strangely, the Venetian castle was the most fun. No tour guides, not many tourists, right on the water and fun to poke around. There's ramps and stairs everywhere, ramparts on the roof, and a surprise cannonball storeroom where there's hundreds of cannonballs. Cannonballs come in different sizes (I didn't know that) and are really heavy. I guess they have to be. It seems like many of the museums in Greece are under renovation this summer, so the museum exhibits were relocated to a smaller room. Still cool, though. I was partial to the bull-head libation vase thingy, but most people like the crazy snake goddess. We spent almost an hour looking for a good goddess replica to take back to JP's brother's g/f. Most of them either had funny-looking snakes or a goddess with a face like a man.
Knossos was pretty disappointing after Delos, where the guides let you romp around the ruins and climb up buildings and hills after a short guided tour. Some moron called Arthur Evans decided that he could pour concrete and try to remake the palace because he happened to be the one that discovered it. Now everything there is roped off, and what isn't has been restored with signs stating annoyingly Evans-centric speculation (as if no one else has an opinion about what the palace looked like). Ugh.
We stuffed ourselves silly last night at a seafood grill on the waterfront, where I learned that mullet is not just a hockey haircut but a very tasty fried fish. Tomorrow we're heading to Rethymno, where we'll probably get a scooter and check out the smaller villages in the middle of the island. Apparently people there still use donkeys for moving stuff around and Greek macho culture is much in evidence. I'm more interested in the weaving and pottery, but am sadly limited by my 30L backpack.
