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Published: March 30th 2016
As I mentioned in my previous entry, the seas were a bit rough during the journey from Rhodes to Crete. I was okay though I did feel the slightest bit queasy at times. More of an issue for me was a problem with uploading photos to the blog. It took forever and I didn’t finish until well after midnight.
So on Tuesday morning I wasn’t looking forward to an early start. However, we were arriving at the port of Heraklion on the island of Crete so there was no way I was going to miss it. Crete was not originally on the itinerary for the Aegean Odyssey but it was added when they decided not to visit Turkey. The addition of Crete softened that blow for me because I had found out about the Minoan civilisation that had lived there while visiting the Archaeological Museum in Athens back in 2008. They pre-dated the other Greek civilisations by quite a way and were probably the first European civilisation.
Anyway, we arrived in Heraklion on time and with calmer seas than we had had the night before. Disembarkation proceeded as usual and we were soon on board buses headed towards our
first destination – the Palace of Knossos.
The site was first excavated by Sir Arthur Evans in the 19
th century and while he did a reasonably thorough job of it, he also decided to partially reconstruct some of it. This means the site is a mix of ruins and semi-reconstructions which makes it a little difficult at times to work out what is genuine. And much of the reconstruction seemed to be conjecture, so I was a little dissatisfied with it all. As we walked around the palace I found myself really impressed with something only to find out it was a reconstruction.
Nevertheless, it was a pleasant morning walking around the site and I can easily see why Knossos was thought to have had a labyrinth in Greek mythology. The palace must have been an absolute maze and not just in one plane. There were multiple stories in many parts and from what I could see there seemed to be no logic to it at all.
From Knossos we headed back into Heraklion to visit the Archaeological Museum. It is a fairly new museum and it houses most of the finds from Knossos and other Minoan
sites. I have to say, I was much more impressed by the museum than I was by the palace itself.
As there were many groups at the museum so our guide took us upstairs to the frescos first. Many of the frescos were found in Knossos and the pieces they found are displayed with a painted reconstruction for the missing pieces. Many of the fresocs were missing quite a lot of pieces so I can’t help but wonder how accurate they were. Nevertheless, they are impressive.
After looking at the frescos we headed downstairs again. Our guide led us around the museum and provided quite a bit of information about some of the highlights. It was here that I really enjoyed the Quiet Vox system used by the Aegean Odyssey for guided excursions on shore. It’s just a microphone for the guide and all of us wear earpieces. But the great thing was I could walk around taking lots of photographs and still listen to the guide. Anyway, I took a lot of photos, some of which will be posted with this blog entry. The pictures will tell you more about how great the museum was.
At
the end of the guided tour, I opted to stay in the museum and look at some of the exhibitions our guide didn’t take us to. The buses were taking us back to the ship, but as we had a free afternoon in Heraklion I think many people opted to stay in town. Not many stayed much longer at the museum as far as I saw.
Once I’d had enough of the museum and my feet and legs were getting a bit sore, I headed out into the city. We had been given a good tourist map of Heraklion and it had some walking tours marked out. I decided to follow one because it took me through the centre of the city and down to the old Venetian fort by the water. I walked along for a bit, just feeling the vibe of the city. It was mostly a commercial centre and as I have more than filled my suitcase with souvenirs now, I wasn’t interested in doing any shopping.
I did find a lovely bar/restaurant off on a side street and had lunch. The service was a bit on the slow side but I didn’t mind. I
was sitting outside under some trees and just watching the Heraklionites going about their day. Why rush that? Lunch was very filling but eventually I had to continue on my way.
I walked down towards the water and it’s a really lovely city. I kept bumping into people from the cruise ship so it was almost like being a local. The water front was beautiful, as I have come to expect from Greek islands. Unfortunately the Venetian fort was closed, but I walked around snapping photos. I stopped for a coffee (actually, I had a hot chocolate) with a couple of Queenslanders from the ship and we walked back to the ship about an hour or so before the all aboard time.
And once again we were off travelling overnight to our next destination. Wednesday morning found us anchored off the coast of the island of Delos. It isn’t possible for the big ships to dock there so we had to use the ship’s tenders to get on to the island. I had heard stories of people being unable to visit Delos on previous trips because the water was too rough for the tenders. That certainly wasn’t the
case for us this time! The sea was so flat it was like glass. It was an absolutely gorgeous morning.
The process of boarding the tenders, sailing to the island and disembarking all ran pretty smoothly and it didn’t take long. We met our guide and were taken into the archaeological site. Our guide then proceeded to talk endlessly about the mythology of the island (it was the birthplace of the gods Apollo and his twin sister Artemis) and the history. It got too much for me though. Not that I wasn’t interested, but I was concerned because I knew we had a limited time on the island. I didn’t want to spend it all standing near the entrance listening to a lecture.
After listening for about 30 minutes I left the group and went off exploring on my own. This was definitely the right decision because I covered far more territory than the group did. I headed down towards the iconic lion statues and was lucky to be able to explore that area with nobody else around. I may have used the isolation to cross a rope fence in order to get a better angle for my
photos without anybody seeing me. Or I might not have, especially if any sort of Greek official ends up reading this.
We were also really lucky to visit Delos at this time of year. The island hasn’t been inhabited since the Romans destroyed the place in 146BC so there are all sorts of flowers growing wild all over the ruins. And of course it is springtime here so it looks fantastic. A few of my photos would probably have looked quite ordinary if it wasn’t for the fields of flowers.
As I walked around the site I gradually began to encounter more and more people from the ship who had also decided to explore on their own. Although the site is large, you can’t really get lost because it’s a small island. I climbed the hill that rises from the sea to form the island, although I only went part way up to the highest section. I didn’t pull out because it was too tough; I only ever intended to get high enough to take a semi-aerial photo of the site. I figured going to the very top would take up too much time.
I then made
my way down into the section of the site where my group presumably headed first, once the guide stopped talking. I didn’t run into my group again, but I did arrive at the theatre just as one of the opera singers in another group was giving it a try. The sound was fabulous!
I explored the section of Delos around the theatre until 11:00 when I headed back to the port. The last tender was to leave at 11:30 and I didn’t want to miss it. I was also pretty exhausted at this point so I was happy to leave. If I’d had more time and the museum had been open, I would have loved to have seen that. But I didn’t and it wasn’t.
Back on board the Aegean Odyssey it was time to eat lunch as the ship made the short journey across to Mykonos. Once again we had to use the tenders to get ashore but there was no tour. We had the afternoon to ourselves. I was feeling pretty tired so my plan was to have a quick look around, visit the windmills and then find a tavern. This I did and I spent
a lovely few hours drinking wine and processing my photos for this blog entry. To be honest, I was kind of glad there were no ruins to visit because an afternoon of doing nothing was just what I felt like.
There’s no point going on about how beautiful the Greek islands are. Everybody knows it and hopefully my photos show it as well. And the waters of the Aegean are spectacularly clear as I hope you can see from a couple of my photos. Tomorrow we visit Santorini which should also be lovely.
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Claudia
non-member comment
Beautiful place
Amazing places David and incredible history