My next and final stop in Crete is in the largest city on the island, Heraklion. This is also where I’ll be ringing in the New Year. The Christmas music hasn’t stopped unfortunately. Anyway, this post is light on sites, but rich in hostel drama. Excited? Don’t be, it wasn’t that big of a deal, but here we go. Heraklion has a pretty awesome Archeology Museum. All the cool artifacts from most of the ancient sites ended up here. I spent a long time in this one.

There was a lot of Minoan art and some preserved frescoes from the Knossos Palace, which we’ll get to in a bit. Below are two figurines both dubbed as the Snake Goddess. No one really knows what they represent though, since they haven’t been able to decipher much about Minoan culture. The English Archeologist who excavated Knossos Palace took a LOT of liberties with his explanations of things and his restorations, as we’ll see more of coming up.

The most famous artifact found at Phaistos, which I visited a few days ago, is this disc with Minoan hieroglyphs dated to the 16th century BC. To date, the Minoan language hasn’t been deciphered, so no one knows what it is. Was it a religious object, a Rosetta stone of some kind, or maybe it was just a receipt for the sale of some goats? It’s a mystery. But they do somehow know that every glyph was individually stamped making this the earliest example of typography in the world.

Apparently, the favorite sport of the ancient Minoans was bull leaping. Yes, really. A woman would stand at the front of the bull holding onto his horns to slow him down a bit, while a male jumper would jump over the bull head to rump doing tricks like backflips, and another woman would be at the rear to help catch him. I think we have a new definition of insanity, folks! And how did they get the woman off of those horns safely after the leap? How did she get in that position to begin with? So many questions!

There are a lot more mysteries surrounding the ancient Minoans, like this board game they found at Knossos Palace. They have no idea how to play it, but then again, how do they know it was a game? Maybe it had some other purpose? So many questions! There was also a small collection of Greek statues, most of which were made during the much later Roman era.

The old town of Heraklion is surrounded by old 14th century Venetian walls and seems to be the biggest outdoor shopping mall in the world. It’s a pleasant place to walk around, though, and there’s lots of food around. The Venetians didn’t just build walls. The 17th century Morosini Fountain and the 16th century headless Bembo Fountain add some character.

Also the reconstructed Venetian Loggia. It was originally a place for the male aristocracy to drink and gossip, now it looks like it has offices inside. They incorporated the Sagredo Fountain into the reconstruction. Does that mean the fountain was here originally or it was moved from somewhere else? So many questions!

The happening place for joggers and dog walkers is the break water extending out into the harbor. But I went for the art and the Venetian fortress.

I got to the 16th century fortress, Rocca a Mare, right at closing time so I wasn’t able to get inside, unfortunately, but it’s pretty impressive from the outside I think.

I also took some time to walk the old Venetian walls around the city. There were some really cool gates around the way. On top is the other hot spot for joggers and dog walkers, a nice path along the whole circumference of the old city.

I had several daytrips planned from Heraklion. The Malia Palace closed for flood repairs, and after checking the official website for the Ancient City of Lato to make sure it was open, it turned out to be closed inexplicably. I was pretty mad about it too. This time I just brazenly climbed over the fence determined to see it anyway, but on the other side of the ticket booth and the bathrooms was another, much higher fence that I couldn’t climb over. Crap! At least the big attraction, Knossos Palace was open.

Knossos was first settled around 7000BC, though the first palace was built around 1900BC. It’s considered to be the oldest city in Europe. This is where the board game, the snake goddess statues, and the bull leaping fresco were found. The English archeologist, Arthur Evans, who excavated most of the site, “reconstructed” a good bit of it with concrete, even though we don’t know exactly what it looked like. So walking around the site is kind of fun and kind of tragic all at the same time.

The so called throne room was interesting. It was found like this with the chair and the benches, though the columns and ceiling are reconstructions, and it’s unlikely that it was a throne, but it’s an unusual and cool find.

It’s not hard to see why this place is so popular for tourism, but I think I would’ve rather seen it without all the “reconstructions”. The big entry courtyard to the palace was probably the best. And leading out from the entry, they found the original Minoan road heading west. The retaining walls are new, of course, but it’s hard to wrap your head around walking on a roughly 4000 year old road!

My last couple of days in Heraklion it started raining quite a bit and the cold winter weather finally arrived. I finally got to make use of all the warm clothes I brought with me. I had also planned to hike a couple of nearby canyons while here that were now flooded and muddy, so I ended up with a lot of free time here. Oh well! I did take some time to go see a couple of ancient aqueducts though. The Venetian aqueduct was built in 1672, by Francesco Morosini, the same guy who built the Morosini Fountain in Heraklion. It carried water from some local springs and deposited it right into his fountain in the center of town.

The Acqueduct of Agia Irini is even more interesting. The bottom portion is the original Knossos Acqueduct built by the Minoans. The top portion was added by the Egyptians when they occupied the area in the 1830’s.

The hostel drama happened my second to last night in town. The first few nights I had the four bed dorm room to myself. Then I got some roommates. The Kurdish guy who snored like a grizzly bear, I put in my headphones to drown him out, and the Israeli guy who got mad and kicked the bed all night trying to wake up the snoring Kurdish guy, but also kept me awake all night. First thing in the morning I got to listen to these two knuckleheads argue and yell at each other, complete with threats of going outside and slicing each other up. The Israeli guy got thrown out, and I was offered a private room since I was obviously the only adult in a room full of children. Ha! Hostels can be interesting sometimes.

That’s it for Heraklion and Crete. Now it’s time to hop on a plane and take a super short flight to another one of Greece’s beautiful islands. Only two more islands and about a week to go on this Greek adventure, so stay tuned…