The Quick Facts
* Stayed at the Kapsaliana Village Hotel, located
about an hour west of Heraklion, near the Arkadi Monastery
* Toured the Palace of Knossos, the great Minoan
city and center of power
* Visited the Arkadi Monastery and then hiked back
to our hotel
* Made our way to the coast, which entailed a
beautiful drive through the small villages and canyons of Crete
The Good:
* The food at our hotel was amazing, especially
for what we paid for it!
* Crete has a mountainous landscape with breathtaking canyons that make for some gorgeous views
* Awesome beaches – numerous and secluded, we
never felt crowded
The Bad:
* Lufthansa, who didn’t have the decency to tell
us our flight was cancelled and therefore delayed our trip 24 hours
After ~31 hours of traveling, we finally made our way to
Crete, the beginning of our two week stay in Greece.
Thanks to the good folks at Lufthansa, our stay in Crete was
one day shorter than planned. The
airline’s pilots were conducting rolling one-day strikes on long-haul flights
as part of on-going negotiations, and it so happens our original flight out of
Denver was impacted. Had they bothered
to notify us that this was happening, we could have adjusted and not lost a
day. Instead, we found out via the morning
news the day we were supposed to leave and as a result left a day later. Not impressed.
We arrived in Crete late at night so just stayed at a hotel
near the airport in Heraklion, one of Crete’s major cities. Our hotel did have a nice view of an old fort
built on the water:
On our first full day, we rented a car and made our way to
our first stop: Palace of Knossos, located in the eastern part of the island
very close to the main city of Heraklion.
The Palace of Knossos is the restored city and palace of the great
Minoan civilization which flourished on Crete from 2700BC to about 1450BC. The palace was eventually excavated by the
British in the early 1900s, and is now a major tourist spot in Crete. The only mystery that remains is why the
Minoan civilization came to an end. Here
are some pictorial highlights:
Something must be VERY interesting here...
This is the line to get into the throne room! Yikes, better be good...
Windsor Palace it is not...
We then made the hour or so drive west to our hotel, which
required the navigation of an intricate system of roads and alleys through
small towns – so difficult in fact, the hotel provides 8 pages of directions
complete with pictures. Somehow, we made
it. And it was worth the trip. With a beautiful and peaceful setting, the
hotel has wonderful views of the surrounding area and a restaurant that
produced some of the best food we had during our entire trip to Greece.
The door to our hotel room:
View from the hotel grounds:
Once settled at our hotel, we headed out to the Arkadi
Monastery, a pilgrimage site for most Cretans and a wonderful piece of
Renaissance architecture. The story of
the monastery is quite sad: built in the 16th century, it eventually
came under attack from the Turks in the 1800s.
In 1866, the Turks were attempting to take control of the monastery but
the residents at the time refused to surrender; when the Turks finally broke
through the gate, the Cretans who refused to surrender set their gunpowder
storeroom on fire, killing themselves and the attacking Turks. Hundreds of people died. Today the monastery is still used by monks,
and is open to tourists to view the wonderful architecture and grounds.
After touring the monastery, we decided to take the ~2 hour
hike back to our hotel to view the countryside a bit.
Our next full day in Crete, our last, was spent making our
way west on the island, through a series of small villages followed by a drive
through steep canyons to eventually arrive at the coast for some beach
time. The beaches, clean and private,
are some of the best on the island. Even
a non-beach person such as myself couldn’t help but be impressed.
After a rough day at the beach, we made our way back to the
hotel to sit at the pool and have dinner.
It would be an early start the next day to travel to our next stop:
Santorini.
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