Almiros Beach & Aneks Agios Nikolaos

... get a sense of how noble Minoans lived. The site leaves many questions as to what ultimately happened to this civilization that disappeared after 1380 BC when a fire destroyed much of the site.

2. We left the palace shortly after 3 and drove to nearby Heraklion, Crete's largest city and home to the Archaeological Museum. David and Holly visited the museum while the rest of us explored the city, which had changed dramatically since my last visit ...

... no supermarkets, no shops, nada! By this stage we were starving as well, so the kind man who ran the hotel took pity on us and loaned us his car to take into the "nearby" village.... which was pretty much deserted. Sigh. We bought a loaf of bread, a tomato, some cheese and some ham, which was to be our dinner, and then our breakfast and lunch for the next day.

We decided one night in solitude was more than enough for both of us so packed up our gear ...

... local sausages from Rethmyio rounded out our meal. After some false starts looking for the bus station, we had a hot slow bus trip out to Knossos, the vast Minoan palace excavated and somewhat Disnified by Arthur Evans in the 1900s. That palace dates from 1700-1400 BC and is a large structure of 1300 rooms. The palace is known for its frescoes, labyrinthian ways, Minoan columns, and frescoes. It also contains the earliest ...

... Greek story tellers - the Minoans were highly organized and technologically advanced some 4000 years ago, and well before the Greeks. The palace grounds were bought from the Turks in 1900, by a British archaeologist, Harold Evans, and he spent the next 35 years investigating and restoring (controversially) the ruins. Well done Evans and another yah boo sucks to Lord Elgin.

We went to one of the beach front bars near Leoniki Residence for cocktails. The view at ...

... My iPod decided it had enough and decided it didn't have aenough energy left =( me being rather annoyed since I had fully charged it that same night << (btw I think we are just flying over Garda Lake in Italy!). Took a stroll outside and by the time we ate our salads and I looked on the information board it said that our flight/gate was closing! Now we looked about 12 ...

... and doing nothing!

I can't believe I only have 2 ngihts left here! The time is coming so fast!!!! Dave is thinking about staying another week! ahha this place it is just like the Hotel California song you can check out but you can never leave! He is already planning on coming back next August and was devising a plan so that I could meet him here for 2 weeks haha! I am excited to go back to Athens and go ...

... about that later

So I am just putting the toothbrush in my mouth when one of the bathroom doors opens up and this (could be if it wasn't for his personality) decent lookiong guy emerges saying HELLO where are you from- me in my bikini bed head make up from the night before toothbrush in mouth says "canphada" and Yuuuurrrrppphhselllff while spitting out toothpaste Pakistan- ok cool "well never met anyone form Pakistan before!" shook his hand and now he is trying ...

... on it before he can call me!@) he says HEY hows it goign I said GREAT hows it goingyourself ... I'M BORED where are you! I said Crete havinga BLAST why don't you come! he goes OK! I started laughing ummm ok? ok? OK!!!! AWESOME! let me just make sure there isroom for you! NOPE no room so not the next day but the day after I almost threw myself on the ground PLEADING with Chris the hostel manager/owner PLEASSSEEEEEEE ok.. we will amke it work he says. call davey ...

... to crete and though hey I'm here why don't I see if there is a flight and YES therew was! a nd only 45 MINUTES versus the 11 hour ferry ride! all right lets do it spent another 5 hours in that airport! the good thing was I was able to buy 2 new books! the English section is very VERY small!!!

So flew to heraklion the problem was my flight was delayed missed th ebus to Rethymno and then the bus to Plakias! I ended up catching soem bus to the ...

Through a series of unfortunate events, this is the sole remaining picture of our magical day in Crete. In all of my genius I deleted the Crete and Turkey photos by accident and boy was that ever a sad day. Of course the first thing I did after getting home from the cruise was upload the Sbux series to Facebook, so now the Starbucks photo is the only one left of Crete :(