Jun 20, 2012 - Crete

CRETE: We took the overnight ferry from Rhodes to Crete arriving in IRAKLIO at 5:50 am. Iraklio is the biggest city on this island. There’s not a lot open at that hour of the morning so we had a taxi drop us at a coffee shop in the center of town where we stayed until about 8:00am when we started the hunt for our hotel. Iraklio is a really interesting place. We took 3 long walks around various parts of the city and found some interesting parks, monuments and old ruins. Visited KNOSSES, a 6700 BC Neolithic settlement…ever neat! The frescoes...

Apr 3, 2012 - Iráklion, Crete

@@@@@@@ BACKGROUND Crete is the largest and most populous of all the islands of Greece. There is evidence of human habitation on Crete as far back as 130,000 years ago. It was here that Europe’s first advanced civilization developed, they were known as the Minoans (c 2700 – 1420 BC). They were devastated by the eruption of the island of Thera (Santorini). The Cretan legends of King Minos and the Minotaur and well known around the world. While most visitors come to enjoy the warm climate and the beaches, many are fascinated by the ruins of...

Sep 17, 2011 - Iraklion

Heraklion or Irakleon, like most Greek cities, there seems to be several ways to spell it in English. Lonely Planet says "Sweaty Irakleon, where you won't find a shortage of laundries..." boy, is this ever true. It's certainly very sweaty and I've seen at least 4 laundries just in the few blocks around my hotel. Its about 90 today and I'm soaked from just walking down to the port. Thankfully, there is a strong wind, and now that the sun has set, it's cooled down a bit. Heraklion is the largest town on Crete and a major transport hub of...

Feb 13, 2011 - Heraklion - Feb 12-13

February 12, 2011 Our ferry was at 4.25am and so we were up at 3am packing and getting ready to go. When I say getting up, I mean getting out of bed for me as I’d never actually fallen asleep! As we were leaving the hotel we were given a free bottle of wine from Poppy, the owner, and we were given a lift to the port by her husband. We got to the ferry terminal just before 4am and we ended up sitting around for quite a while as the ferry was late arriving and then had a load of lorries it needed to unload and then load. We eventually left...

Aug 12, 2010 - Last Day on Crete - swimmin' with the fishes

Thursday, August 12 Jump to full entry

Aug 11, 2010 - Gorge-us

August 11, Wednesday Jump to full entry

Aug 10, 2010 - August 10 - History lesson

August 10, Tuesday – today we slept in late. We didn’t get around until after noon but that was OK. We went to to Knossos today – the 3500 year old ruins of the Minoan civilization. We had also planned to go to a couple of wineries to taste some Cretan wine but, after yesterday, we needed a break from wine anyway. As it turned out, we spent more time at Knossos than we thought we would. The guidebooks suggest an hour and ½ but we did not have a guide and had to figure things out for ourselves. The parking was free, which was a nice...

Aug 10, 2010 - August 9 - Cretan Experience

August 9, Monday. We spent the morning in Hersonissos buying a pay as you go “mobile” phone (say it like the British do “mo-bile” with a long i sound). Our room phone charges are exhorbitant – 1 Euro per minute! Anyway, the man at VODOFONE said that it would be no problem and instructions were in English. However, the calling instructions were not, nor were the command prompts on the phone. Luckily, the numbers, at least, were familiar. Anyway, we also spent some time at an internet café on a main street and we people watched as we surfed...

Aug 9, 2010 - August 8 - somewhat lost

August 8, I say somewhat lost because we went to Iraklion or (Heraklion) today to do some sightseeing. I wanted to go to the Archeological Museum but we stopped at the Venetian Fort on the way. We are currently at an internet cafe on the main street of Hersonissos. It is a great place to people watch. Anyway, we found the fort OK but had no luck at all finding the museum. We had enough trouble just figuring out the road signs to see where we could park. We saw signs with a capital P and a red slash through it. Trouble was, there were always...

Aug 8, 2010 - August 7 - What's next?

Aug 7 , Saturday – last night I got a good 8 hrs of sleep with little interruption. Rick said he slept well, too. We spent the day getting our bearings. We spent some time walking around the resort. The climate and terrain here are a mixture of many memories for us. There are many bushes and flowers we remember from Phoenix, the countryside has elements of Eastern Washington, and there are many Hibiscus at this resort – reminiscent of Hawaii. There is a very large beetle , similar to a Cicada, in many of the bushes and trees. It chirps and...

Aug 7, 2010 - Aug 6 - travel day

Aug 6 – about 5:30 PM local time and 7:30 AM Seattle time. We are so tired. We got out of bed about 27 hours ago and haven’t slept much. Rick slept a little now and then but I haven’t been able to sleep really at all. We are just now boarding the last leg of our flight. It is a 40 minute flight from Athens to Heraklion. We have been waiting 7 hours for this flight. Our flight was supposed to have only a 4 hour layover but there was some mix up. We used part of the time to take a local bus to a beach area between Athens and Piraeus. We...

Jul 27, 2009 - Crete and Knossos

The ferry ride from Rhodes to Crete took 13 hours... I repeat, 13 hours. No one told me it was going to take that long!! I suppose I should have done my research a little better, but still, that is a ridiculous amount of time. I really shouldn't complain though, I met an Aussie couple on the ferry who had bought their tickets a week earlier, at which time the ferry was scheduled to leave at 2am. So they turned up at 1.30am, only to discover they didn't need to be at the port until 6.30am, as the new departure time was 7am. Seeing as I...