In the land of Minos

“Happy is the man, I thought, who, before dying, has the good fortune to sail the Aegean Sea.” (Nikos Kazantzakis in Zorba the Greek)

I thought I´d start this post about my weekend adventure to Crete with a very famous quote by a very famous Cretan author, even though I didn´t actually sail the Aegean Sea and, to be quite honest, I didn´t even see much of it because I traveled on the night ferry. I bought and started reading the quoted book while in Crete. I thought that besides discovering the history, the food, the music, the modern cities, the habits and traditions, the natural landscape of Greece, I could also dive into some of its literature.

I got the boat in Piraeus – Athens´ port – with a good friend I have made since being in Greece and we arrived in Heraklion (Crete´s main city and one of the biggest cities in Greece – not an especially interesting town, although it does have a vibrant day and night life) when it was still dark. The boat trip lasted 7 very uncomfortable hours of attempting to sleep on a chair (my leg still hurts from the weird position I fell asleep in). But on the bright side, the ticket was only 20 euros (hurray for E.U. student cards!). We spent the day traveling around by car and visited the lovely town of Rethimnon (which reminds me a little bit of Venice), went through the village of Armeni, had a very yummy and shaky lunch (earthquakes are relatively common in Greece – this is the second I´ve experienced since September), drove through some amazing and lunar looking mountains and visited the paradisiacal Preveli beach, near the monastery which bears the same name. Crete is a very diverse and mountainous island – some very sharp and rocky mountains, others covered by a blanket of green vegetation. In some areas, the landscape reminded me of the one between Alcácer Ceguer and Tangier, in Morocco (I am sorry for those of you who haven´t been to some of the places I reference – I draw comparisons between the few places I have visited for the people who have also visited them can more or less imagine what I´m talking about). The highest mountain in Crete is Mt. Ida, which overlooks the island at more than 2000 meters high! We had an amazing dinner at a fish taverna (which is a Greek, typical but not necessarily touristy, restaurant) – I do love Greek food!

Photographs of Rethimnon – its unique buildings, port and street art. The last one shows a little village near this Rethimnon.

The mountainous, lunar and paradisiacal landscapes of Crete.

On Sunday we visited the palace of Knossos, not very far (by bus) from Heraklion. I was really excited because I learnt all about it while studying the Minoan Civilization for one of my degree´s subjects. But I was quite disappointed, since a lot of it has been (badly) reconstructed and a huge amount of (now cracking) concrete was used during these conservation works, carried out during the first half of last century. But being an Archaeology student and passionate about the Human past, I HAD to visit this archaeological treasure and the archaeological site is within an incredible natural landscape. Meaning, it is still very much worth the trip up the hill.

 

 

The cracking concrete, the Throne Room and the bull-leaping fresco of Knossos.