Crete

We tookthe night ferry to get to Iraklion, Crete. Not a very good sleep, but not too bad either. Our hotel in Iraklion is cheap and comfotable. It's a few kilometers away from downtown, which is nice. Means we had to figure out the bus system though. It rained on our first day, so we didn't end up doing very much. The archaeological museum closed a few weks ago for renovations and won't open again for another 2 years... bummer! We then decided that going to the aquarium might be a nic change from our usual tourist haunts. But we had to take a voyageur bus there, and getting onboard proved to be impossible. Not only was the bus we wer supposed to take full, but there was no possibility of ticket refund, no telling when the next bus would be, no way of telling where any of the busses were headed to before finally getting to the door, and little or no chance of even getting to the door due to the ravenous hordes of elderly tourists rushing the door. This was less organized than Asian busses, if that's at all possible. Long story short, we ended up skipping out on the aquarium, and seeing Spiderman 3 instead.

Today, we got up bright and early to visit the ruins of Knossos. For you people who are to shy to ask: this is where King Minos sacrificed people to the Minotaur, if you accept the Legends. Facebook isn't cooperating with photos at the moment, so I'll creatively use Lucasarts graphics to illustrate (hurray for visiting sites featured in geeky childhood video games!).

The site was REALLy interesting (to me, anyways). I've studied up on this place during my classical studies courses at Carleton. The horns seen in the above pic are actually there, but are mostly a reconstruction as is a lot of the rest of the place (Mr. Arthur Evans made many assumptions while reconstructing the palace). Many areas are roped off as there is still conservation work going on at the site.

Tomorrow, we're leaving for Thera on the island of Santorini. This is one of the possible places in antiquity that would have helped inspire the catastrophic Legend of Atlantis. The volcanic island blew up thousands of years ago giving is a kind of ring structure. I'm geeking out here, but I just can't justify NOT using th next graphic...