Captivating Crete (Part 1)

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August 21st 2010

Published: November 28th 2010

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Delek Delek

Greek Temple

Temple decorated with a bull fresco that has been reconstructed here in Knossos.

Just over a week after arriving back from Sarajevo, I was off again to start an exciting two-week odyssey through Greece.
The nature of living in London means that short weekend breaks are the name of the game - but as the places you can go for a short breaks start to decrease, and as thoughts of heading out on long trips start to increase, I find myself leaning towards more and more "extended" holidays.

And so the trend has started in Crete.
Following my usual rush to the airport (not helped by unplanned train cancellations - the fact I actually made it was a miracle) I arrived at the gate only to find out that easyJet were having trouble "locating their crew". One of the more amusing delays for a flight - not that I was laughing, having sweated through my clothes running to the gate.

Stepping out of the airport in Heraklion, the capital of Crete, I was still sweating. It was insanely hot.
It's always hard to make yourself take the more difficult option when you know that the easier option is well, easier - but just like the Greek government recently, I decided I would

From Inside The Venetian Fortress

Looking out at the Sea Of Crete from the Venetian Fortress in Heraklion.

introduce austerity measures and would try to find a bus to get to my hostel, instead of jumping in a taxi.
Which was a slight challenge. Although Belgrade gave me some practice at reading Cyrillic, Greek Cyrillic has way more crazy symbols, that are more familiar with mathematics than text. Having Roman alphabet on tourist maps is absolutely useless if all the street signs are in Cyrillic.
I was waiting for the no.1 bus but as the no.12 bus approached the bus stop, the old lady waiting with me told me I could catch this into town. My hostel was in town so any bus going into town was good.
Unlike London buses, Cretan buses don't announce the names of the bus stops so you don't really know where you're supposed to get off. I pass a big square that seems to be a bit of a hub, knowing that my hostel was near a big square that was a bit of a hub. Getting off at the next stop and consulting the maps at the bus stop, I managed to decipher the Cyrillic to work out that my hostel was literally 50m around the corner. Perfect.

Walking into

Agios Minas Cathedral

Impressive and underrated Orthodox cathedral in Herkalion.

"Rent Rooms Hellas", the acrid, damp smell smelt just like Malaysia. A smell common with constantly hot and humid conditions. Lugging my luggage up the stairs, I wasn't best pleased that the reception was on the top floor.
Although it was 11pm, it was actually only 9pm UK time so there was no way I'd be able to sleep - and I needed water, so I thought I might as well go for a walk to familiarise myself with the layout of the town.

There are some nice pedestrian areas around Heraklion, most notably around St. Tito's Church, Lion Square and the town hall. This is a little sullied however by the amount of graffiti around and the amount of seemingly abandoned construction sites - visual evidence of the economic crisis currently rippling through the country.

I would say that the temperature would have been in the early 30s that night, with the humidity making it feel twice as hot. The dormitory was full, meaning there were six others sleeping in the same room. There was no air-conditioning. My bed was closest to an open door leading out onto balcony overlooking a rather ratty-looking pedestrian alley. Occasionally a

Venetian Port

Archway that formed part of the old harbour in Heraklion.

motorbike would noisily splutter past which was really annoying. Either that, or there would be kids or drunkards shouting loudly as they walked past. I couldn't close the door because even with the fan going full blast, it was just too hot. Having hairy legs is usually not a burden but tonight it most certainly was, as the hair on my legs felt like non-removable sheepskin rugs taped around each of my legs.

Lonely Planet had said that looking around Knossos, Crete's largest and most important Minoan archaeological site, would take a whole day, so I was hoping to get up early that morning. A bad's night sleep and a tiring journey the day before meant I wasn't up before 11am.
Rent Rooms Hellas has a handy cafe on the top floor and it was here that I enjoyed my first Greek salad of the sojourn. With tables arranged over a covered, wooden, blue-painted rooftop balcony overlooking the town towards the sea, and decorated with hanging, cubic flower pots, it was certainly a pleasant and idyllic setting. They certainly charged you for it though - I paid 7€ for a Greek salad and toasted sandwich.

Arriving at Knossos

South Propylaeum

The south entrance to the Palace of Knossos.

by bus at around 12:30pm, another thing that Lonely Planet had said was that a guidebook for the site was "essential". At 6€, I wasn't quite so sure and I didn't need to lug around another book in my tightly packed luggage. No maps of the site were on sale - you had to buy a book to get one - so I thought I might as well just wing it and went inside.
Indiana Jones had been one of my idols growing up and I was sure at one point in my childhood that I had ambitions to be an archaeologist. Those ambitions have long since died, and walking around Knossos, I suspected that those ambitions had more to do with solving puzzles, fighting soldiers and carrying a whip, than they had to do with learning about the actual archaeological sites themselves.

The whole site was a palace that was built gradually between 1700 and 1300 BC - so the ruins are really old. The palace was excavated by English archaeologist Arthur Evans who also reconstructed parts of it which you can see today. The palace itself is said to have been part of the Minoan civilisation who

Ruins

Next to the Grand Staircase in the Palace of Knossos.

originated from Crete and is also the setting of the legend of The Minotaur.
The story goes that King Minos of Crete (of which the Minoans and the Minotaur are named after) was given a magnificent white bull with which to sacrifice to the god of the sea, Poseidon. When King Minos decided to keep the bull instead, this pissed Poseidon off so much that he got Aphrodite, the god of love, to make King Minos's wife Pasiphaë, fall in love with the bull. In her possessed state of lust, she had a wooden cow made for her which she then climbed into, attracting the white bull to copulate with it, and in turn copulate with her. Ewwww. This unholy union subsequently produced an offspring that was half-man, half-bull and that ate people. It was called the Minotaur and it is said to have lived in a labyrinth built beneath the ruins I was now walking through.
An illustration at the start of the route through the ruins showed what Evans had thought the palace might have looked like. It looked luxuriously awesome.
It was pretty big - 1,300 rooms over 6 acres. The rooms all served different purposes -

Throne Room

The "throne" on the right is facing what is assumed to be a large pool that would've contained water for ceremonial purifications in the Palace of Knossos.

guest houses, hundreds of storerooms, and temples among other things - with many of the walls and halls decorated with colourful frescoes. As only fragments of the frescoes remained, many of the frescoes have been reconstructed.
Within the many storerooms, were pithoi - huge vases, some taller than a human, used to store things like grains, oil and dried fish.
With a central courtyard, a grand staircase and a throne room, it certainly would've been a spectacular place back in the day. The reconstructions are pretty cool and the signboards were very informative - I certainly didn't need a guidebook.

What I was expecting to take all day, in fact only took a couple of hours and I was back on the bus to Heraklion.
The heat and lack of sleep was exhausting, so I had a bit of chill time at the hostel before heading out to the Herakion's Venetian port, the Rocco al Mare, where I visited the Venetian fortress - the Koules.
Built in the 16th century, it looks fairly impressive on the outside - on the inside it's been pretty well preserved with large, arched hallways and spacious, high-ceiling rooms. Large, old wooden doors opened

Up On The Roof

Atop Heraklion's Venetian Fortress.

up into pitch-black tunnels storing what looked like hundreds of abandoned cannonballs. The most impressive part of the place was the roof, where a raised walkway that ringed the circumference of the fortress was punctuated by small towers that looked out to sea through grilled openings in the fortress wall. The views were pretty good, the sea a beautiful shade of aquamarine.

It was a really, really windy day and waves crashing against the harbour were completely soaking tourists brave enough to walk along a path next to the fortress. The "wave gauntlet" led to the old sea wall, which must've jutted out for at least two or three kilometres.
With nothing better to do and the prospect of getting completely soaked at random actually appealing in the Cretan heat, I walked the gauntlet and walked along the sea wall. The waves were so violent that while walking along the wall, you could at any moment in time be saturated by waves crashing over the sea wall. The was a line on the path that the excess water always hit, so I decided to follow the line. The suspense was gripping.
Well, I had to try and make my

Weapons Room

Old cannonballs in a storeroom inside the Venetian Fortress in Heraklion.

own fun, you know. I did get wet about four or five times while walking halfway along the sea wall and back - there wasn't anything at the end of the sea-wall worth wasting my energy on getting to.

I spent the rest of the afternoon walking along the old city walls to a couple of the city gates and checking out a couple of other sights. The walls reminded me of Valletta, Malta as did Eleftherias Square, a large open semi-circle of a square that served as a major bus hub, which I passed on my way to the hostel last night. Herakion's biggest church is the Agios Minos Cathedral which is actually quite impressive.

It was Saturday night, but Heraklion didn't seem to have the most obvious nightlife - although these places often have the best nightlife. There wasn't really anyone at the hostel to mingle with and I was pretty tired so I was quite happy to grab a gyros and a beer by the Lion Fountain in Plateia Venezilou before catching up on some blogs at an internet cafe. While walking back I passed through El Greco Park where all the nightlife and outdoor cafes

St. Tito's Church, Heraklion

Charming church that started off Orthodox, became Roman Catholic with the Venetians, became a mosque with the Turks, and is now Orthodox again.

seem to be centred and passed a couple of cranking bar/clubs. It did feel like a waste of a Saturday night to be heading back to the hostel, but I knew there would be plenty of great nights out ahead - especially when I meet up with everyone on our tour of the Greek Islands.

A lot of people say that Heraklion is a bit of a hole, and it certainly isn't the most alluring place I have ever been. There isn't too much to see and there are lots of stray cats and dogs. Knossos is just about worth it, especially if you are archaeologically inclined. Or Indiana Jones.
Cretans so far haven't been too friendly either - the workers tend to just do the bare minimum to make you go away as quickly as possible. The only outwardly friendly local I have met so far was an old man who approached me to give me directions to the bus stop.

So in saying all that, I decided to leave for Rethymno as soon as I had checked out the next day - a place with a reputation of being a bit more charming and beautiful.