Knossos: Wall Street circa 1700BC

Knossos, capital of a commercial empire spanning 500 years, and our top priority on the trip. It stretches back from around 2000 BC until Santorini gave the eastern Mediterranean the world's largest recorded volcanic eruption and threw their civilization into chaos. It is the site of the story of Theseus and the minotaur in the labyrinth, but 2 civilizations older than the classical Greeks. While more of a ruin than the other sites I have seen while traveling, the artifacts and and frescoes were great.

It has been on my travel list since medical school. It is impressive for the how advanced they were and how old it is. It was fun to sit under the pillars and think about that. Older than any other civilized site in Europe. Older than anything in east Asia (China may have been forming a very primitive first dynasty but anything earlier than the Shang dynasty is kinda speculative, and they had nothing like this). Abraham was probably being born around this time. Only Egypt and the early Mesopotamian civilizations were older.

Below is Alyssa playing at the starting point of Europe's first road.

Iraklio

Lonely Planet was a bit too harsh on this city. Rather being a totally drab business city with little to see or do, there were the Venetian fortifications, pretty good Greek restaurants at low prices, and a lot of museums including a large one dedicated to Minoan artifacts. Plus there were nice beaches a few miles to either side of town.

By this time Alyssa had pretty much had it with her parents draging her around Greece with just two small backpacks and a stroller. We started taking more and more time out to do fun things for her. We've learned to plan more kid stuff into the next trip.

Of course none of the above is a compelling reason to visit Iraklio above some other, perhaps prettier Greek town. The real reason to visit Iraklio is that it is the best jumping off point to visit Knossos.

Hania

We took a ship to Crete overnight then a bus to Hania, an old Venetian town. Probably, asthetically the most interesting area on the trip. Below are shots from our restaurant (open air in venetian ruins) and our hotel entrance Hotel Nostos.

These are other pictures of town:

Acropolis

More pictures from Athens. Day 2 in Greece. These are from the Acropolis (well the last is the Temple of Hephaestus in the nearby ancient agora).

Athens

Athens was more fun than we expected. We got off the plane and took the subwat to the area near our hotel. After the subway, poor Marie who got no sleep while watching Baby girl on the flight, tried to make us go the wrong way. It was a big debate and I eventually had to use my very limited greek to ask someone where the hotel was to keep us from hiking off in the opposet direction, which goes to show that 3 hours of sleep beats no sleep by a lot.


The hotel was in a kinda shabby neighborhood (i.e. most of Athens looks um, not great). Once we figured out that it was only a few minutes from all the interesting sites and Plaka, the nicest area in town, it was great. A 4.5 star hotel we got cheap on Hotwire. The Hotel and good public transportation left over from the 2004 Olympics made Athens the easist part of the trip. So easy, in fact that it is the first time we saw lots of Americans on any of our trips (For whatever reason the more off the beaten path the higher the proportion of Europeans and Aussies, Americans don't seem to be quite as hardy travelers).

Pictures in order, Click to enlarge:
1&2 Temple of Olympian Zeus
3 Hot greek woman and cute baby in front of an othodox church (Marie says someday we need to go somewhere where people won't think she is a native)
4 Street in Plakas
5 View from the Acropolis