In Iraklion, Crete

A few days ago we took the bus from Paleokora (??) to Hania, then on to Iraklion. The bus terminal in Hania is not very nice (crowded, dirty and disorganized) - nothing like the bus terminals in Turkey (We call it the 'T' place so as to not offend people since we unfortunately keep making comparisons, always in the 'T' place's favour). :^(

Despite what our guide books told us, Iraklion is not a bad place. It is the largest city on Crete, and the old part of the city where we are staying, (although more trendy/expensive than the city overall), is rather nice. We did have some difficulty finding a place to stay (checking out about 5 places before finding an affordable hostelish type place) called Hellas. There we are paying 25 euro/night for a small private room with balcony (but no cooking facilities). The hostel has a french feel to it (using bright blue paint and tiles to brighten the place up) and they seem to have a lot of french guests. It is on one of the quieter streets in the maze of streets of the old town. The city is not so touristy, so we didn't feel as if we were in a tourist zone (which we had to escape from) - most of the people we saw strolling about where Greeks, not tourists.

We arrived early on a Sat. night, and so got to observe the night life. We saw lots of rather scantily clad young women with pointy shoes and lots of young men driving motorcycles and scooters so fast down the narrow streets (where people also walk) that we thought for sure we would see a fatality. The city plaza is beautiful - marble with benches and trees - and as the book describes, pedestrian and vehicular traffic swirls about - so it is a very alive place. It is sad to see people carelessly tossing cig. butts, gum and garbage on the marble, tho'.

Arriving as we did later Sat and into Sunday, we had a problem we encountered before. Most shops are closed on Sundays, so it was a bit tricky to buy food. But we found cheap eats near the fountain (it looked quite nice, but it is under repair).

The arch. museum is supposed to be impressive to see, but it is under renovation. As is the Parthenon in Athens (as we heard from some disappointed Canadians we met at the hostel). You can't get a pic without a crane in the background.

Yesterday we took the bus to Knossos - which is thought to be a Minonian Palace. Unfortunately, we were quite disappointed with the place. The posted info and restored structures were sparce, with info similar to this "Evans thinks these structures might be for storing rubbish. Or it might be for grain storage". Compared to Ephasus in the 'T' place, it was pretty sad.

We did get some pleasure out of giving our tickets to the Canadian couple from Montreal we met earlier in the day (so they could get in for free), and out of advising some other people at the hostel who had come from the T place to not bother with Knossos (they had also been to Ephasus). Giving travel advice (and receiving it) always makes us happy.

We are beginning to suspect that Santorini might be the nicest place to go in Greece and we won't be going there. Oh well! We could possibly have done it, but it would have been a rushed (and expensive) side trip.

We spent the evening last night hanging out with the young Montreal couple. Tim and the couple enjoyed a sheisha (sp?) (water pipe) after drinking some cheap wine on our balcony.

Olivia was going to organize an outing with us in the UK, and Tim had gotten a reply from the 'cute dutch girls' who live near Amsterdam that we could visit them for a few days. We'll have do to this another trip!

Tomorrow we are catching a flight to London, then we are going to try to change our flight back to Canada (hopefully landing in TO rather than Calgary) in order to go see Tim's parents. It will also be nice to be able to see my sisters and their families in KW.


Observations
- Greek children are not that well behaved... our book seems to imply that children are rather doted upon and that seems to be the case.

- in the T place, guards/employees at historical sites were always well groomed, sharp looking men wearing back suits or uniforms (in Vienna, it was usually grey suited men) In Greece, you see half asleep women or people dressed as casually as the tourists, so it is hard to identify them as officials or employees

- people seem happier/less grumpy/more polite in Iraklion than in other parts of Crete (but we are still experiencing a fair amount of grump!)

- as in the T place, men walk arm in arm, as do women. Physical contact is not so verboten here as it is in Canada (which is a good thing)

- men have 'worry beads' that they keep playing with to help them with stress (kinda like how Chinese students play with their pens)

Maybe we didn't go to the best part of Greece, or maybe we caught it during a bad couple of weeks. But based on our experiences, I would say - Go to the T place instead!

Anyway, the trip has been educational! Wish us luck in getting back to Canada ASAP!