Crete

Well, I'm back from my jaunt to Crete. Here is where I attempt to reconstruct a record of my travels aided only by my memory, an outdated itinerary, ten pages of incoherent mirror-writing, and two hundred digital photos. Here it goes...

Day One (Tuesday September 23):
-The entire school boards buses on the plaza in front of the Kallimarmaro that take us to the port of Piraeus where we are going to catch our ferry to Crete. The bus groups that we board at this time are the same ones that we are going to be traveling with all week. My bus is comprised of the two sections of Aegean and Ancient Greek Art and Archeology, so that means that we are going to be seeing a lot of archeological sites. Other buses have different itineraries and different emphases. The ferry leaves Piraeus at 9 o'clock PM.
-When we got aboard the ferry, it did not align with what my preconceived notions of what the word "ferry" meant. I was expecting something like the Steel-Electric ships that the Washington State Ferries use in the Sound. I did not expect something that looked like an ocean liner. We walked into the ship, and I thought that I had walked into the lobby of a luxury hotel. It was all over mirrors and fancy decorations and everything. And the ship was so big I couldn't tell I was in one, which was disappointing, because I think that the best reason for traveling on a ferry (besides the fact that they run to places you couldn't get to otherwise) is to be out on the water. But after a few hours of wandering around the ship (and the ship was big enough so that I could wander around it for a few hours), I finally found the open deck and went as far forward as possible, and it finally felt like I was on the water instead of in a building, with the unmistakable wind of a ship underweigh in my face and playing with my hair. It was incredible, because I've missed that feeling so much because it's been so long since I've been on a ferry.

Day Two (Wednesday, September 24):
-Breakfast aboard the ferry, then disembark at the port town of Heraklion. Our bus then departs for the archeological site of Mallia, where there is the remains of a Minoan palace. If anyone asks you any questions about what a particular architectural element in a Minoan palace is, say storage. That's probably what it is. Minoan palaces have more storage magazines than anything else. If it's not storage, the other answer is a lustral basin, though those are kind of obvious because they're sunk down into the ground. It was really cool seeing the remains of that palace, though. I had seen plans of Minoan palaces at many times in the past, but it was different walking around the actual remains. It was also neat because unlike the palace of Knossos (which we visited the next day), the palace at Mallia hasn't been massively reconstructed, so we saw it much as it was originally excavated.
-Next we visited the site of Gournia, which was a Minoan town built on a hill. Gournia was a maze of stone walls (though the walls were preserved only about two or three courses high in most places, so I wasn't in any danger of getting lost, and I didn't see any bull-like creatures anyplace in the site). Cool things about Gournia: (1) It was the first Minoan site excavated by a female American archeologist, whose name was Harriet Boyd-Hawes. (2) The modern name comes from the stone vessels called "gournes" which are found in front of all of the houses there. (3) In one quarter of town, every house had a potter's wheel, so pottery was probably Gournia's main export. (4) There is a flat stone on top of the hill with three depressions and a drain bored into it, from which archeologists have reconstructed an entire ritual of blood sacrifice.
-Next stop was the American Archeological Research Centre for East Crete. Most of the other people on the bus thought that this was a really boring stop, but I found it interesting. I guess I'm just weird like that. The center is an archeological laboratory, so we got to see everything that happens to stuff after it's dug out of the ground. The person that was giving us a tour told us about all of the different tests that they do to things (one that I should probably mention is a non-destructive method that boils potsherds in an organic solvent [it sounded familiar, but I didn't write it down and I don't remember the name] and then running it through a gas chromatograph-mass spectrometer, and using the results to figure out what was cooked or stored in the vessel [I hope that I'm remembering the technical details correctly enough to give a proper impression of what they were doing]), and reconstructing vessels out of fragments that they find, and conserving artifacts so that they don't degrade further, and all of the different kinds of drawings that have to be done of sites and artifacts, and the massive amounts of digital data that they have to store and archive. I thought that seeing all of the different expertises that go into producing archeological findings was really cool, but apparently that was just me.
-After this fun-filled, action-packed morning, it was finally time for lunch in Pachia Ammos, which is this little town by the Archeological Research Center. My friends on Bus B and I ate at this snack shop that was right on the water. It was absolutely beautiful. The water was deep blue and the sky was so bright and sunny. It was just gorgeous. This is a general note for any scenery I refer to in Crete. I may say it, I may not, for each particular stop, but in general, it was absolutely beautiful.
-Evening was free in Agios Nikolaos, so the person I was rooming with and I wandered around the town in search of dinner, which ended up being gyros, and then sitting in a cafe in the town square, me with a frappe and her with a glass of wine, and talking for a while.

Day Three (Thursday September 25):
-The entire morning was filled with our visit to Knossos. Knossos is an interesting site to visit for two reasons. The first is that it's a World Heritage Site, so it is brimful of tourists and tour groups from all over the world. Someone told me that Knossos gets over two million visitors every year. This makes the site really crowded, with long queues to see all of the "main attractions." I also heard more languages at Knossos than I think I have heard for the entire rest of the trip. There were tours being conducted in English, Greek, Spanish, French, and German, and those were just the languages that I heard enough of to recognize. The second reason that Knossos is so interesting to visit is that Sir Arthur Evans reconstructed the whole site in the 1920's when he was excavating it, and so at times it is difficult to figure out what was original to the Minoan palace of Knossos and what Sir Arthur Evans reconstructed. It's also interesting in a sad way to eavesdrop on all of the people who aren't aware that most of what you see when you visit Knossos, including all of the frescoes, is reconstructions and copies, and make comments on how well-preserved everything is after all these thousands of years. The other highlight of our visit to Knossos was that we found a litter of puppies near the theatral area, and everyone, including our professor, kind of dropped the assignment we were working on to exclaim over how cute they were.
-In the afternoon, we went to Heraklion, which is the main port of Crete and the town that we originally arrived at. We went on a walking tour of the city, mostly along the walls that protected the city when it was a Venetian colony some-odd hundred years ago. Then we were turned to our own devices for the rest of the evening. Heraklion is a beautiful city, where you can really see the influences of all of the years under Venetian rule. The main square is St. Mark's Square, which has this fountain with lions in it. It's right nearby this beautiful church (not St. Mark's, I don't know what the name of it is), which at various times has been a Greek Orthodox Church, a mosque, and now a Greek Orthodox Church again. Unfortunately, I couldn't take any pictures inside because it was forbidden, even without a flash, but it was just as beautiful on the inside as it was on the outside, with icons and carvings everywhere. I spent the evening walking around Heraklion with a girl on my bus and getting gyros from this place our Latin professor recommended to us, and we sat in the gyro place and talked for a while. Then we were walking around St. Mark's Square, and we saw another boy from our bus sitting in a cafe, and we joined him and talked for a while. Then we accompanied him while he got a gyro, and we talked for a while. Lastly, we joined up with another one of our friends, went back to St. Mark's Square, got a bougatsa (a Cretan pastry with phyllo dough, clotted cream, cinnamon, and honey) and Greek coffees, and sat around there and talked. If you haven't noticed, this is a common theme from the evenings on this trip.

Day Four (Friday September 26):
-First thing that we did was walk to the Archeological Museum of Heraklion. The main museum is closed for renovations, but they have a small interim museum open that houses most of the highlights of their collection. It was still really cool, because I got to see, live and in person, most of the examples of Minoan art I've studied in AP Art History and in this Aegean and Ancient Greek Art and Archeology class. This includes such wonderful things as the bull-leaping fresco, double-headed axes, marine-style pottery, and the snake-goddess figurine. I was especially excited because my favorite marine-style pot ever, the octopus vase, was on display, and I got to actually see it. It was just as cute in person as in Gardner's Art Through the Ages.
-Then we were off to Rethymnon. When we got there, we hiked up to the Fortezza and the Archeological Museum. We visited the Archeological Museum first so that we could all get in for free on our professors' lecturer passes. It was a small place, with some interesting things like clay sarcophagi. Unfortunately, I couldn't take pictures of any of it because most of the artifacts there were unpublished, and for some reason it is forbidden to take pictures of unpublished artifacts (I'm not sure why. I mean, are they afraid that someone is going to jump them on publication on the basis of a couple of snapshots? That doesn't seem reasonable, but one doesn't argue with museum guards).
-After that, my friend and I spent the next two hours wandering around the Fortezza, which is a Venetian fortress built in the late 16th century to protect Crete from the Turks. I know that I'm in good company when my friend and I see a series of openings in the curtain wall which are larger on the inside than on the outside, exclaim "arrow slits? Awesome!", and then proceed to reconstruct the Fortezza's defenses based on the architecture of the walls and surrounding area. Of course, the holes weren't arrow slits, they were for guns, but they were still really cool. The view from the Fortezza was also amazing. It was at the top of a big hill, obviously, and it looked down onto the harbor and the surrounding area. It was so beautiful.
-We bought crepes for lunch (sweet crepes for my fortifications friend and me, since we already had something to eat for lunch, and a savory crepe for my other friend), and ate them on the beach at Rethymnon. I probably don't need to repeat saying this, but it was absolutely gorgeous.
-After lunch, we got back on our bus and headed to Chania. Again, we were left to our own devices for the evening, so the girl I was rooming with and I took a siesta, because at this point on the trip everyone was exhausted, and then we headed out to find dinner. We wandered around the Old City for a while without finding a taverna, which was the longest that I have ever walked in Greece without seeing one, and finally had to ask directions from a guy working in a periptero. He didn't speak English, and so I got to do the asking because my Greek is better than the girl I was with. That made me feel at least somewhat accomplished. We found the taverna and had dinner. I had kalamaria, and she had tzatziki and dakos, which is hard bread soaked in a bit of water and served with chopped tomatoes and Cretan cheese on top. It was good. Then we wandered more and found another taverna on the waterfront, where we had dessert. I had Cretan pie, which I found out was nothing more than a flatbread spread with honey, and she had yogurt with honey.

Day Five (Saturday, September 27):
-The long promised hike down the Agia Irini Gorge. This hike was billed as generally easy and flat, with a couple of rocky sections. Apparently, everyone except for me agreed with this description. The trail was filled all throughout with loose rocks on which I was afraid that I was going to turn an ankle, interspersed with sections where I was literally climbing over the rocks. It wouldn't have been too bad if I had had a walking stick to help me keep my footing (a third leg would have been helpful too, but that's a bit less practical), but I didn't have one with me and I was afraid to go off of the trail to try to find one, because I'm not sure what the Greek regulations are about collecting and moving things within national parks. The hike took me forever to do, it seemed like, and I know that I was one of the last 10 people out of the gorge, which includes the two professors and the guide who were acting as rearguard. Part of the reason I took so long was because I was taking pictures, and so everyone just got ahead of me, but it was still not the greatest feeling to finish behind everyone else, even if it wasn't a race.
-Then we got on the bus (the last one left) to go to Sougia (about 5 km away), for the promised lunch and seabathing. After I got off the bus, Nadia, the program director, asked me why I was limping and whether I was okay. I hadn't even noticed that I was limping, so I blamed my knee and said that I just needed to rest it. She let me alone for that, but that was all I needed after that hike down the gorge, to be informed that my joints were acting up in a noticeable manner. After lunch, I went swimming for a while, and then got out and laid on the rocks of the beach (it was another one with rocks and no sand) for the next two hours until the buses left. It was nice, but it was also about an hour too long.
-Then we got on the buses for the two hour long ride back to the port at Chania. I think that the bus ride was actually the most enjoyable part of the day, which is rather depressing if you think about it. But we spent the entire bus ride telling stories, jokes, and riddles, and playing six degrees of separation with only the movie knowledge that we could come up with off the top of our heads, so it really was a lot of fun.
-At last we got on the ferry that would take us from Chania back to Piraeus. This time it actually was a ferry, not an ocean liner, so that made me very happy. The ferry left at 9 o'clock PM. I spent the first few hours of the voyage on the top deck (which was a lot easier to find on this vessel than on the last) talking with some of my friends. Then I went to bed relatively early, because we had an early call this morning.

Day Six (Sunday, September 28):
-At six o'clock in the morning, we got off of the ferry and got aboard buses for the last time. They took us back to Kallimarmaro, from where we walked back to our apartments, which for me is nearly two kilometers. It was dark when we got off of the ferry, and it was that early dawn light by the time I got back to my apartment. I turned back on the water heater so that I could take a shower later, laid down on my bed, and proceeded to go back to sleep for two and a half hours.
-Then I got up, took my shower, made myself breakfast, and wrote all of this up. Now I get to do all of my homework and reading for tomorrow.

What a trip. And this is a really long post. Congratulations if you made it all the way through.