This time my son was my companion. And despite of him being annoyingly intolerable of the heat (mind you, it was "just" the end of September!), in the end he still said he liked the trip (then added: next time, mom, please choose the place closer to the northern pole)
So… we’ve started off in the capital of Crete – Heraklion. One day we spent in this city allowed us to grasp the general character of the island and also to visit the main attraction of the Heraklion area – The Knossos Palace – that famous Minotaur Labyrinth from my favourite myth. Good thing I didmy homework and browsed through the travel sites like Virtual Tourist and Lonely Planet and Trip Adviser…and thanks to all those kind people who posted their travel tips that we had enough sense to follow. So when we arrived to the Knossos Palace by the opening time in the morning, the 5 min queue was nothing but a joke compare to the queue accumulated by the time we’ve already finished our Knossos tour, when all the tourist buses arrived. And this was out of tourist season crowd overload! I cannot imagine the agony of those queuing there in the middle of the summer heat wave! And even more so now, knowing that for what it worth, getting sunstroke in the name of ruins didn’t worth it.
Ruins there were. In all senses, regardless from which angle you will look at them. Granted, Crete did suffer from the earthquakes occasionally in his history and that natural phenomenon doesn’t help in preserving ancient monuments. In brief: after the magnificent temples of Egypt, preserved almost untouched, the Minoan ruins give the impression of…ruins. There were also no visible signs of the maze, so the imagination had to work really hard to get the picture. However, there were things to be seen and having been there myself, I’d say: it was worth our sweat. I must say – something about ancient sites that makes me want to see, touch, walk, breath…maybe in a hope that some ancient wisdom will rub on me, maybe I will hear voices sharing a sacred knowledge…or maybe just imagine myself living in the past times and smile to this thought…hmmmm…not really, but who said I cannot dream?...
So… we’ve started off in the capital of Crete – Heraklion. One day we spent in this city allowed us to grasp the general character of the island and also to visit the main attraction of the Heraklion area – The Knossos Palace – that famous Minotaur Labyrinth from my favourite myth. Good thing I didmy homework and browsed through the travel sites like Virtual Tourist and Lonely Planet and Trip Adviser…and thanks to all those kind people who posted their travel tips that we had enough sense to follow. So when we arrived to the Knossos Palace by the opening time in the morning, the 5 min queue was nothing but a joke compare to the queue accumulated by the time we’ve already finished our Knossos tour, when all the tourist buses arrived. And this was out of tourist season crowd overload! I cannot imagine the agony of those queuing there in the middle of the summer heat wave! And even more so now, knowing that for what it worth, getting sunstroke in the name of ruins didn’t worth it.
Ruins there were. In all senses, regardless from which angle you will look at them. Granted, Crete did suffer from the earthquakes occasionally in his history and that natural phenomenon doesn’t help in preserving ancient monuments. In brief: after the magnificent temples of Egypt, preserved almost untouched, the Minoan ruins give the impression of…ruins. There were also no visible signs of the maze, so the imagination had to work really hard to get the picture. However, there were things to be seen and having been there myself, I’d say: it was worth our sweat. I must say – something about ancient sites that makes me want to see, touch, walk, breath…maybe in a hope that some ancient wisdom will rub on me, maybe I will hear voices sharing a sacred knowledge…or maybe just imagine myself living in the past times and smile to this thought…hmmmm…not really, but who said I cannot dream?...
More to come…