Heraklion, Crete

Catching some sun at Nymphes.
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After a repeat “quaint” breakfast and a quick stop to pick up catamaran tickets for our coming trip from Heraklion to Santorini, we set off for the 145km journey from Hania to Heraklion.

Enroute, and just out of Hania, we stopped off at the Commonwealth Military Cemetary on the waterfront at Souda. This is where around 1500 soldiers from Britain, Australia, and New Zealand, who lost their lives in the Battle of Crete, are buried. The cemetery is kept in immaculate condition and still evident were the wreaths laid by New Zealand and other veterans who had visited only a month ago. It was a moving experience seeing all the headstones with the silver fern engraved on them and we were pleased we had the opportunity to visit. D found it particularly sad to think of all the soldiers buried so far from home, however Toni took comfort from knowing they were being well looked after there. For her, the saddest aspect was the large number of unknown soldiers, whose families will never be able to find them. It rained during our visit to the cemetery, the only time so far in our trip, which somehow seemed quite appropriate.

An ice cream managed to soothe the savage beast for a few minutes...

Midway to Heraklion was the third largest town of Crete, Rethymno, where we stopped for lunch, again on the waterfront.

Enroute we also made a detour to visit Melidoni Cave. Over 300 villagers took refuge in this cave from the Turkish army in 1824. When they refused to come out, the Turks lit a fire at the entrance to the cave and they all died of asphyxiation. There is a monument to the villagers in the cave and it is full of stalactites and stalagmites. Great to wander around (and yet more steps to exercise our legs!).

The bulk of the journey was spent trying to avoid suicidal drivers, none of whom seem to take any notice of posted speed limits, nor worry about overtaking on blind corners. D was amazed at the insanity of it all, and exhausted from the concentration required to stay alive. But stay alive we did and we made it to our next pit stop, Nymphes Luxury Apartments, atop a hill overlooking the resort village of Agia Pelagia, 17km west of Heraklion.

Despite its title “luxury”, this is actually one of our cheapest room rates, however the accommodation is fantastic. The complex is relatively small and we have a studio unit at the top (yes, more stairs….) with the most stunning views out over the water and Agia Pelagia below. We can only imagine the room rate is this reasonable due to its location away from Agia Pelagia and Heraklion – you really do need your own transport to get here – but it is well worth it.

That evening, the pace of the past 12 days finally caught up with Toni and (much to D’s disappointment!) she crashed at around 7.30pm and slept for a solid 12 hours….

Saturday dawned a little breezy and chilly and so we decided to take the opportunity to head into Heraklion and check out the location of the ferry. We got there just in time to watch that day’s ferry depart for Santorini – a bright red, big, catamaran with Vodafone emblazoned down the side of it. It looked fast…. At about the same time a regular ferry also departed – more like the regular Cook Strait ferries (only bigger) and while it may not have been heading to Santorini, if it had it would have taken about 8 hours to get there as opposed to the 2 hour trip we will have in the catamaran.

After that we managed to find a park on the waterfront (free!) and walked along to the Koules Venetian Fortress, an impressive castle-like structure built in the 16^th Century.

The rest of Heraklion didn’t really look that exciting – a reasonably large city by Crete standards (approx 100,000 people) but dusty, noisy, chaotic, and not a lot of charm.

We had been told by others, however, that we should visit the Palace of Knossos, just out of Heraklion. This is apparently the number 1 tourist attraction on Crete and it’s not difficult to imagine why. However first we had to get there……

We managed to follow the signs easily enough and, just after coming around a bend, came to a marked parking area where we were directed in by people standing out on the road. In we go, thinking this is the main parking area, park up and then get approached by one of the attendants telling us it was 4 Euros to park for the day. D couldn’t believe it and was heard muttering not so much under his breath that he didn’t know how they could sleep at night. We figured, however, that there wasn’t any other option but to pay this ridiculous fee, and so D begrudgingly hands over the money and off we head, looking for the entrance to the palace.

100 metres down the road (around the next bend) we stop short – there was another parking area, advertised as FREE……..you can imagine the language coming from D…..yep, after managing to avoid the rip off artists so well in Italy, we finally got caught by the buggers in Crete.

An ice cream managed to soothe the savage beast for a few minutes, until we enter the palace and stand in line at the ticket office. Of course, just as we get there they decide to do a handover of the cashiers. While in most places you would expect this to take maybe a minute (at worst), the exercise at Knossos required a wait of about 5 minutes while the first cashier totalled up his takings, recorded who knows what and moved away so his replacement could come in. That would have been tolerable except we were dumbstruck when the new cashier sits down and then proceeds to wipe down his desk and everything around it (another minute) before opening the window and letting us in. We were second in line waiting behind a German family (who also couldn’t believe what they were watching) and by this time a queue of about 20 people had built up behind us.

Finally we get our tickets and no sooner do we walk in than we get approached by people asking if we speak English (or other languages) and then offering guided tours. After the parking incident D wasn’t too keen and could only imagine this was another scam designed to relieve the dumb tourists of their cash. Anyway, the Lonely Planet guide to Crete had suggested that a guided tour was probably the best way to go here and so we took the bait, only to have to wait for 50 minutes while the guide rustled up some more victims.

During the 50 minute wait it would be fair to say D was not a happy camper – we’d just been ripped off by a parking scam and we had now forked out more cash (20 Euros) for a tour which showed no sign of ever happening. He had visions of the woman disappearing into the crowd and us being left high and dry.

Eventually, however, the tour did get going and, thankfully, was worth every euro. Our guide was a local Cretian woman who was able to fill in the history and stories around the Palace that guide books and signs could never achieve. The Palace dates back to 1900 BC and was discovered by a British archaeologist, Sir Arthur Evans, in 1894. The structures and technology invented by the Minoans in building the palace were incredible to view. For instance, they created the first known terracotta pipe system for bringing water down from the hills to the palace, thus creating, a running fresh water supply.

We ended up spending about 3 hours there, taking lots of photos (of course!), by which time the hassles of the early afternoon were a much less painful memory.

There wasn’t much left of the afternoon by that time so we navigated our way back out of Heraklion and headed back to Agia Pelagia, the village below our hilltop apartment. By this time the wind had died down and it was another stunningly hot, clear day, and the small strip of sand that made up the beach there was covered with sunbathers, most on loungers and under umbrellas. We didn’t have our togs unfortunately but instead hired a pedalboat and paddled our way around the bay for an hour before settling into yet another beachside restaurant for an early dinner.

Sunday – our last full day in Heraklion and Dwayne decided to head down to Agia Pelagia (leaving Toni to read on the balcony at Nymphes) and look for some shorts. He returned early afternoon with not only a pair of pants, but also a white linen shirt, as well as successfully finding a shop which sold blank CDs… Yep, Toni had taken so many photos that we had completely filled the two 700MB disks we brought with us and now needed a third. At the time of writing this she was up to around 1500 shots saved on disk, and D is predicting this to be in the vicinity of 2000 by the time we get back home. Dwayne compensated for this by making sure we wouldn’t run out again and bought a pack of 10.

The rest of the afternoon was spent enjoying the facilities on offer at Nymphes, i.e. lounging by the pool catching some sun. That evening we decided to sample Crete McDonalds – including a “Greek Mac”. Not bad, although the service was definitely on “island-time”.

A quiet evening had packing, in preparation for yet another early morning, catching the FastCat 4 to Santorini.