Minos and winos: the palace at Knossos and the Iraklio wine country

This post is a bit late in coming.  I'd say it's been hectic, and we've been busy, but that's not really true.  Sure, we've been working like we're supposed to and doing fun touristy things and going to the beach, but the main reason we haven't posted is lack of internet and a certain amount of pleasant laziness.

That actually kind of characterizes our first several days here at the beginning of the trip, as I alluded to in my first post.  We spent most of the time napping, sitting on the verandah, relaxing, eating delicious fresh food, and reading. It took us two days before we even went down the ten minute walk to the restaurants along the beach, and another day until we actually got into the water.

You may be wondering what's wrong with us, spending two days so close to that beach without actually going down to it, sleeping away precious beach and vacation time.  But here's the thing. Actually, here's two things.

First of all -- and this is one of the most important things about this trip -- we're here for five weeks.  The great thing about staying someplace for so long is that there's just no rush.

Second of all, you need to know a little bit about how we actually got here, and what our departure from Tromsø was like.

I won't bore you with the details -- at the time it all seemed very dramatic and interesting, but now it seems like too much trouble to go into it, and I doubt that anybody but us would find it that interesting anyway.  What's important is that, between cleaning our house for a subletter, preparing for a sad leave-taking from Sandhya's parents who'd been visiting, a conference, a big meeting, chapter deadlines, multiple independent itineraries, flight delays and rebookings (apparently because too many of the traffic controllers in Oslo decided to take vacation at the same time.  No, seriously.), when we got to Crete, we had each been going on like 3 hours of sleep a night for several days.  So yeah, we were ready for a break.

But by the end of our first week here, we were ready for some excitement.  So on that first Saturday, we got up early(ish), loaded up the car with drinks and snacks and sunscreen (did I mention that our landlady gave us the use of her car while we're here?) and drove off to...wait for it...Knossos.  If that name doesn't ring a bell, think of the Minoan civilization, as in the mythical king Minos, as in the father of (well, husband of the mother of) the Minotaur, who lived in the labyrinth (not *a* labyrinth, *the* labyrinth) and periodically ate virgins before he was slain by Theseus and so forth.  Knossos is one of the main archaeological sites left behind by the Minoans, a shockingly advanced civilization that flourished in this part of the world between around 2100 and 1500 BCE.  The Mycenaeans took over Knossos after that for a couple hundred years, leaving behind lots of inscriptions in Linear B -- a syllabary that represents the earliest written form of Ancient Greek.  Anyway, Knossos is an extremely large and archaeologically rich site, normally referred to as a palace, but really more of a small city including all sorts of living spaces, storage areas, ceremonial rooms, a sewer system that still works and possibly the world's earliest flush toilet.  It was so elaborate and complicated that it's probably what inspired the myth of the labyrinth.  So yeah, we were excited to see it.  Knossos is about a 30 minute drive from our place, just south of Iraklio (Heraklion), the capital of Crete, super easy to get to if, like us, you have use of a car (did I mention that our landlady gave us her car?).  We got there in the late morning and spent a good two hours exploring with a guided tour and then buying assorted souvenirs and trinkets for ourselves and our moms.  Photographic proof follows below.

Murals at the ceremonial West gate

Storage rooms, with a 4000 year old vase

Sandhya and the hills

Tom and fellow tourists

View across to the East gate

Hats are good when it's hot.

The famous bull-leaping frescoe.  White=woman, red=man

I learned about framing in high school photography class

Bull fresco near the East gate

Fresco of mythical beast in the throne room

Grand staircase

Queen's bed-chamber with dolphin fresco

The bull fresco.  Cool huh?

Then it was lunch time, so we drive a short ways further south to a village called Skalani, which is the home of Elia kai Dyosmos, a restaurant that specializes in contemporary Cretan cuisine.  I had a fantastic lamb shank, while Sandhya had an array of vegetarian appetizers, including the fennel pie pictured below.  Appetizers are the key to being vegetarian in Greece -- all or nearly all main courses on a typical menu will have meat in them, but many -- and sometimes even most -- of the starters are meat-free and delicious.  (Sandhya wants me to tell you that our waiter/sous chef was Pakistani, and was extra nice and attentive to us and flirty with her.  More importantly he understood what vegetarian meant.)

Food porn

Fennel pie is good even if you don't like fennel

Skalani is at the edge of Crete's largest wine region, which spreads south through the hills from Iraklio.  So after lunch we went for a drive through the hills and vineyards.  It was glorious. Grapevines, olive trees, little villages with little Byzantine churches and old ladies in long black dresses.  At some point we ended up lost on a dirt road that went through the vineyards and met a few goats.  After picking up some refreshments and asking for directions a couple times, and then following a comical series of signs through the narrowest streets of one of the tiny villages and across several fields, we found ourselves at the small organic winery run by the family Stilianou.  There we met three generations of the family, and had a wine and olive oil tasting plus tour of the facilities hosted by Ioannis (the middle generation), while his elderly father sat outside and smiled at us and his 12 year old son (that would be Giorgios and Giorgios) fetched things.  They were so friendly and hospitable that we would have bought some wine just out of good will even if it had sucked, but as it turns out, their wine and oil are actually fantastic.  So we got some of both.

Tom-orama

Sandhya in a peaceful pose (with olive branch)

Sometimes this technique works

Olive trees olive trees olive trees olive trees

Byzantine chapel in a village

Mountain goat!

Some of the vines of the Stilianou winery

The Stilianou winery, with two generations on display 

A proud Ioannis with his tanks of fermenting wine

A road through the wine country

After this, we drove around a bit more in the wine country, and though we had originally planned to have dinner in Iraklio, we decided to just head back home to Agia Pelagia for a relaxing evening.  We stopped along the way at a scenic spot to take some photos of the resorts along the coast and Iraklio itself in the distance, and a friendly Finn happened by who was nice enough to take our photo.  It was a gorgeous day.

Resorts on the coast

Iraklio on the right

Thank you Jussi, or Teppo or Teemu or Pasi or whatever