Showing posts with label Crete. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Crete. Show all posts
Sunday, December 9, 2012
Iraklia, Crete, Dec. 2012
I stayed at the Kronus Hotel, friendly, central, safe, view of the sea down the street. I ate at the Pantheon Restaurant, delicious, friendly, safe. I loved walking the streets, fascinating, friendly, safe. This is bustling tourist town with lots of cafe's, clubs and stores open late at night. I came for Knossos but enjoyed the night in Iraklia as well.
Thursday, December 6, 2012
Iraklio, Crete - Dec. 6, 2012
The flight was only a half hour. Landing reminded me of Tinia and the other island landings I've made. Sea on one side land on the other. We were down. Windy on the tarmac. My hair blowing every which way. A day I should have worn a pony tail. We all crossed from the plane to a bus that took us all not very far to the terminal. We could have walked but the bus was a nice touch.
My Europeia car rental person wasn't there when I arrived. The plane had arrived early. I didn’t realize this so walked across the street to a Eurocar place where the girl told me that they were a different company. The major trouble with Greek is not only do I not know the language but the alphabet has alot of different letters and the words are often multisyllabled. My mind gets lazy and registers only the beginning parts I recognise. This has caused me reading maps and driving no end of misery with trying to remember and find roads. GPS would be the answer but the fellow at the car rental says gps works well in cities like Athens but not elsewhere. My bet is the maps aren’t accurate just like on West Coast Vancouver Island when my gps had me sailing a mile overland.
When I returned the young black haired Europeia man was there with a sign showing my name, just as Hannah my assistant, had written there’d be. We signed the contract. It was in Greek but he insisted that all the insurance for everything and everyone else that was possible for a car was covered and included. We then walked me to the lot where there was a little Kia. "I had a ford fiesta a bit like this in Israel," I said. He gave me the keys. I later wondered if the Greek contract had life insurance.
So far I've only had one near death experience, a near head on collision as the sun was in my eyes and both I and the other driver were too much in the centre of the road coming around a hillside corner. Now that’s holiday adventure. The gas tank was empty but the gas station attendant was really helpful. $40 Euro for a tank of gas. 1 Euro is about 1.3 US dollars.
I was booked into Kronus Hotel, a very fine hotel indeed, right on the seaway a short ways up from the 16th century fort. I didn't have a map or gps and the only one of the 2 streets turned out to be on the map the car folk gave me. I was convinced also some enterprising surviving Japanese came to Crete and set up the Kamikazee motorcycle school which continues to this day. I was told to ask directions. This is hard to do from a car, in a foreign language. There was absolutely no parking. Crete is wall to wall parked cars and motorcycles, with occasionally one lane for driving, that must be shared with passing motorcycles, pedestrians, on coming cars and the occasional dog or cat. I drove around for an hour after filling the empty tank. Finally finding a place to stop I was told it was by the fort beyond the 'little boats'. That was the marina I'd passed several times. There was the fort that had held of the Turks for some time and sure enough there was Kronus Hotel.
I was getting irritable (on vacation) by the time I found it, praying to God and thinking that this town reminded me of Honolulu, Cozumel or LA. It had that rich kid vacation vibe too with lots of tourism motif. This was off season. Apparently in the summer there are 10 times the people and vehicles. I can imagine it. A traffic jam of monumental proportions in paradise. I was reduced to stop and start often a 2 km hour in the town as it was. On the other hand it was noon and in the morning and evening I found things thinned out. I was not like this either in the countryside and towns there. Taxis are everywhere in the town and it's easy to walk all over the downtown area. Lonely Planet recommends buses and taxis. I think the way to go would be by far the scooter.
After dropping off my bag in the very nice room with great little balcony I returned to the car following the well laid out signs to the Knossus Palace site. I arrived at 3 pm just when it closed. I was miffed.Fortunately the gift shop was open and I could bought a classic hand made Cretan male knife with handle carved from goat bone and a gold bull's head. I'd heard in Athens about these special Cretan knives all the men had. Now I had one. I also bought a guide book of the Palace which I planned to study before going to the excavations. It brings back undergrad as memories are constantly being tweaked. I'm so looking forward to seeing the dolphin fresco and the griffins, I bought a small tera cotta of the snake goddess, the topless Minoan woman so appropriately attired. Civilization has gone down hill since it began in Crete.
I drove south into the interior arriving at the Monastery Elafonfries. This was a beautiful site. So peaceful, serene and sacred. I felt God here in that special way one does in monasteries. I put it down to all the prayer and meditation that has gone on and goes on here. In the chapel I met a sweet little old lady who came up to my navel. She beamed and rattled on to me in Greek, not a word of what I understood.
I drove across the country with it's wine fields and olive fields and now some industrial windmills looking like the latest crop. Each little village still had people and dated back to time immemorial. I reflected how this was just an 'island' comunity, like Salt Spring Island or Vancouver would be if it had 5000 years of human habitation, with armies invading routinely I was glad to gt back to the hotel.
I've just had a lovely meal at Restaurant Pantheon. The town comes alive at night in a very attractive way. Stores are open, markets doing business, people ambling about the streets, a band playing classic big band anthems. I certainly can see the appeal and frankly envy the rich kids these days whose parents send them here for vacation. I'd like a summer here. I'd sing Carey too, feeling nostalgia for the days when Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen were in the islands. I’d dance in Zorba the Greek's village which I drove by earlier in the night too. As it is I’m thankful for this trip and time.
It’s like putting faces to names I’ve known for a very long time. I'm really loving it.
My Europeia car rental person wasn't there when I arrived. The plane had arrived early. I didn’t realize this so walked across the street to a Eurocar place where the girl told me that they were a different company. The major trouble with Greek is not only do I not know the language but the alphabet has alot of different letters and the words are often multisyllabled. My mind gets lazy and registers only the beginning parts I recognise. This has caused me reading maps and driving no end of misery with trying to remember and find roads. GPS would be the answer but the fellow at the car rental says gps works well in cities like Athens but not elsewhere. My bet is the maps aren’t accurate just like on West Coast Vancouver Island when my gps had me sailing a mile overland.
When I returned the young black haired Europeia man was there with a sign showing my name, just as Hannah my assistant, had written there’d be. We signed the contract. It was in Greek but he insisted that all the insurance for everything and everyone else that was possible for a car was covered and included. We then walked me to the lot where there was a little Kia. "I had a ford fiesta a bit like this in Israel," I said. He gave me the keys. I later wondered if the Greek contract had life insurance.
So far I've only had one near death experience, a near head on collision as the sun was in my eyes and both I and the other driver were too much in the centre of the road coming around a hillside corner. Now that’s holiday adventure. The gas tank was empty but the gas station attendant was really helpful. $40 Euro for a tank of gas. 1 Euro is about 1.3 US dollars.
I was booked into Kronus Hotel, a very fine hotel indeed, right on the seaway a short ways up from the 16th century fort. I didn't have a map or gps and the only one of the 2 streets turned out to be on the map the car folk gave me. I was convinced also some enterprising surviving Japanese came to Crete and set up the Kamikazee motorcycle school which continues to this day. I was told to ask directions. This is hard to do from a car, in a foreign language. There was absolutely no parking. Crete is wall to wall parked cars and motorcycles, with occasionally one lane for driving, that must be shared with passing motorcycles, pedestrians, on coming cars and the occasional dog or cat. I drove around for an hour after filling the empty tank. Finally finding a place to stop I was told it was by the fort beyond the 'little boats'. That was the marina I'd passed several times. There was the fort that had held of the Turks for some time and sure enough there was Kronus Hotel.
I was getting irritable (on vacation) by the time I found it, praying to God and thinking that this town reminded me of Honolulu, Cozumel or LA. It had that rich kid vacation vibe too with lots of tourism motif. This was off season. Apparently in the summer there are 10 times the people and vehicles. I can imagine it. A traffic jam of monumental proportions in paradise. I was reduced to stop and start often a 2 km hour in the town as it was. On the other hand it was noon and in the morning and evening I found things thinned out. I was not like this either in the countryside and towns there. Taxis are everywhere in the town and it's easy to walk all over the downtown area. Lonely Planet recommends buses and taxis. I think the way to go would be by far the scooter.
After dropping off my bag in the very nice room with great little balcony I returned to the car following the well laid out signs to the Knossus Palace site. I arrived at 3 pm just when it closed. I was miffed.Fortunately the gift shop was open and I could bought a classic hand made Cretan male knife with handle carved from goat bone and a gold bull's head. I'd heard in Athens about these special Cretan knives all the men had. Now I had one. I also bought a guide book of the Palace which I planned to study before going to the excavations. It brings back undergrad as memories are constantly being tweaked. I'm so looking forward to seeing the dolphin fresco and the griffins, I bought a small tera cotta of the snake goddess, the topless Minoan woman so appropriately attired. Civilization has gone down hill since it began in Crete.
I drove south into the interior arriving at the Monastery Elafonfries. This was a beautiful site. So peaceful, serene and sacred. I felt God here in that special way one does in monasteries. I put it down to all the prayer and meditation that has gone on and goes on here. In the chapel I met a sweet little old lady who came up to my navel. She beamed and rattled on to me in Greek, not a word of what I understood.
I drove across the country with it's wine fields and olive fields and now some industrial windmills looking like the latest crop. Each little village still had people and dated back to time immemorial. I reflected how this was just an 'island' comunity, like Salt Spring Island or Vancouver would be if it had 5000 years of human habitation, with armies invading routinely I was glad to gt back to the hotel.
I've just had a lovely meal at Restaurant Pantheon. The town comes alive at night in a very attractive way. Stores are open, markets doing business, people ambling about the streets, a band playing classic big band anthems. I certainly can see the appeal and frankly envy the rich kids these days whose parents send them here for vacation. I'd like a summer here. I'd sing Carey too, feeling nostalgia for the days when Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen were in the islands. I’d dance in Zorba the Greek's village which I drove by earlier in the night too. As it is I’m thankful for this trip and time.
It’s like putting faces to names I’ve known for a very long time. I'm really loving it.
Wednesday, December 5, 2012
Palace of Knossus, Crete, Dec. 2012
The Minoans are the oldest western civilization dating back several thousand years BC. A neolithic settlement was there seven thousand years ago. The first palace on the hill beside the Krairatos River dates from 1900 when it was built on other ruins. Abraham was only about 1800 years so a sense of the antiquity of the place can be appreciated. The Hague had a copy of the Minoan throne made for their court, Minoans developing the first court thousands of years earlier. They were a ranching society and a sea faring society. The bull is their central symbol but the dolphin mural dominated the Queen's chamber. Minos was the name of successful kings. The Minotaur was the King's prize bull. The labyrinth derives it's name from the double headed axe which adorned the palace. Myths arose from the tributes paid by surrounding countries. Cypress trees surrounded the palace a centre of trade and government. So far excavations, first recognized as a palace by Evans 
in the 1800s, have uncovered store rooms, craft shops, meeting rooms and the private chambers. The government hopes to extend the excavation in the future. It's estimated tens of thousands of people lived in the vicinity.
What so impressed me as an undergraduate student at the University of Winnipeg,studying the books and slides of the architecture of the palace, was the lighting by means of skylight and the use of gravity for a flush toilet in the queen's chamber. By use of aqueducts and narrowing piped water to maintain pressure water was brought from 10 km away from the springs of Archane on the Kephala hill.
Huge man sized jugs were used to store grain while smaller jugs served to store olive oil and wine. The sea once came near to the doorstep of the palace allowing boats to anchor in the greater harbour and smaller boats to come to and fro The women went topless (which explains all the genius and creativity). The palace of Knossos, the civilization and sophistication of the people were so far beyond that of medieval palaces of England and Europe where chamber pots were in use till as late as the 19th century, waste being thrown out on the streets. Here there was a sophisticated set of water pipes to bring clean fresh in and taken bracket off. Another system collected run off water. Amazing
The main local rodeo event for these earliest of cowboys was gymnastically hand springing off the back of a bull .
Boys will be boys, especially if the watching women are topless. The murals that were found carried so much detail that much can be learned of the lives of these gentle people. The Egyptians speak of them but due to catastrophes, the last of which might have been a Tsunami and fire, they literally and mysteriously disappeared. The Mycenaens followed them in history.
Because I had to catch a plane and wanted to take it all in as efficiently as could be I hired Mary as a guide. It was her idea and well worth the experience. Thanks to her I learned so much more that I might not have were I to just walk about with a book. I fear without her I'd have only got half the really good stuff so can truly recommend a guide for this, especially Mary, an island woman of Crete, born a just a few miles a way. The griffin was a central religious symbolic, the eagle head with the snake joining it to a lion's body. It adorned the walls of the throne room.
The site was a true joy to experience. Extraordinary. I later visited the archeological museum in the town and saw the original murals and frescoes, those at the site being imitations, being in the open and unprotected. The originals were even more moving. What a privilege and wonder it's been for me to go to Crete
and see this palace that so impressed me as a student. Of all the cultures I learned of this seemed to be the most remarkable yet existing so many thousands of years ago.
Thanks to Mary I learned that men were depicted in the murals with brown, women with white and animals and birds blue. Stairwell and skylight alongside it providing natural lighting several floors down into the interior.
The toilet was a small room of the the back of a larger room. The bath was separate.
A special trap trap was used to let the silt from roof run off water to be filtered out. Ingenius engineering.
Pots 6
feet tall.
Reconstruction of the wood pillars from the evidence of where they were place in the floor before they were destroyed by a fire.
The Theatre.
in the 1800s, have uncovered store rooms, craft shops, meeting rooms and the private chambers. The government hopes to extend the excavation in the future. It's estimated tens of thousands of people lived in the vicinity.
What so impressed me as an undergraduate student at the University of Winnipeg,studying the books and slides of the architecture of the palace, was the lighting by means of skylight and the use of gravity for a flush toilet in the queen's chamber. By use of aqueducts and narrowing piped water to maintain pressure water was brought from 10 km away from the springs of Archane on the Kephala hill.
Huge man sized jugs were used to store grain while smaller jugs served to store olive oil and wine. The sea once came near to the doorstep of the palace allowing boats to anchor in the greater harbour and smaller boats to come to and fro The women went topless (which explains all the genius and creativity). The palace of Knossos, the civilization and sophistication of the people were so far beyond that of medieval palaces of England and Europe where chamber pots were in use till as late as the 19th century, waste being thrown out on the streets. Here there was a sophisticated set of water pipes to bring clean fresh in and taken bracket off. Another system collected run off water. Amazing
The main local rodeo event for these earliest of cowboys was gymnastically hand springing off the back of a bull .
Boys will be boys, especially if the watching women are topless. The murals that were found carried so much detail that much can be learned of the lives of these gentle people. The Egyptians speak of them but due to catastrophes, the last of which might have been a Tsunami and fire, they literally and mysteriously disappeared. The Mycenaens followed them in history.
Because I had to catch a plane and wanted to take it all in as efficiently as could be I hired Mary as a guide. It was her idea and well worth the experience. Thanks to her I learned so much more that I might not have were I to just walk about with a book. I fear without her I'd have only got half the really good stuff so can truly recommend a guide for this, especially Mary, an island woman of Crete, born a just a few miles a way. The griffin was a central religious symbolic, the eagle head with the snake joining it to a lion's body. It adorned the walls of the throne room.
The site was a true joy to experience. Extraordinary. I later visited the archeological museum in the town and saw the original murals and frescoes, those at the site being imitations, being in the open and unprotected. The originals were even more moving. What a privilege and wonder it's been for me to go to Crete
and see this palace that so impressed me as a student. Of all the cultures I learned of this seemed to be the most remarkable yet existing so many thousands of years ago.
Thanks to Mary I learned that men were depicted in the murals with brown, women with white and animals and birds blue. Stairwell and skylight alongside it providing natural lighting several floors down into the interior.
The toilet was a small room of the the back of a larger room. The bath was separate.
A special trap trap was used to let the silt from roof run off water to be filtered out. Ingenius engineering.
Pots 6feet tall.
Reconstruction of the wood pillars from the evidence of where they were place in the floor before they were destroyed by a fire.
The Theatre.
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