Marilena Beach Heraklion

... place. It was great to be back on Crete (my first visit was in 1984) because the island holds endless appeal: vestiges of Minoan civilization, which flourished on Crete some 3,000 to 4,000 years ago and is one of the most brilliant and amazing cultures the world has ever known, abound at Knossos and other archaeological sites around the island. Invaders and occupiers – Roman colonists, the Byzantines, Arab invaders, Venetian colonists, and ...

... were looking up! <br><br>We found a decent looking place to stay in (Kastro Hotel) on hostelbookers.com and opted to wander around there to see if we could get it a bit cheaper than on the net. Unfortunately, the map on the net wasn't correct and we ended up doing bog laps around Heraklion for AGES in the rain with our backpacks looking for the damn place. Every time we asked someone where it was they pointed us in another direction. I mean, if you don't know ...

Yesterday we got up at 5am in order to catch our plane from Santorini. Most of our group was on the same plane , so we said our sleepy good byes. We flew on Aegean Air which has nice new planes. We went to Athens and then basically retraced the short flight by flying to Crete. We staggered into hotel Lato at 10am where we received a special bonus upgrade to the 5th floor executive suite. 2 rooms on the 5th floor with an ...

... was magic but the cocktails were dreadful. Kevin&#8217;s martini had ouzo in it but the barman refused to do another. Chris&#8217; margharita seemed to be alcohol free and Milly&#8217;s Manhattan didn&#8217;t taste very good. So we moved to Axos for more drinks &#8211; this time excellent, and then to our favourite eating place, Yannis, for dinner. The drinks and food there were superb too and they gave us free cheese pies and raki (as if we needed more booze). Nice.

We had a delay. Got up around 3:45 am and left Rose Cottage at 4 O'Clock for the airport. It was already starting to get lioght as we cruised by sleeping English villages. By the time we arrived at the airport it was fully light. Stood in a lond que(sp?) for check-in where we were told that our plane was delayed adnd that would we would hear further news at 10 am! (the joy of ...

... a copmplete idiot at 3 in the morning. YES this is what I went through the whole ngiht I think it added up to about 1 hour of sleep as I kept waking up WHATS THAT oh just a cat WHAT oh it's the waves from the ocean across the street Oh it's that weird ass car pulling in again I stare him down meanfully.<br><br>So I finally got on the bus got here and walked the way to the hostel sighing and smiling the whole way! it was surreal being back and knew ...

... to report and this was at 19.15hrs but he was informed at 05.00hrs now you get your conclusion. I strongly believe that the raid was organized with somebody from the hotel and the thief's used a narcotic gas and a fake key to make the entry. My advice ...do not go in Greece especially in the place I m talking about you will have no security and nobody will care about you, the tourism agencies are selling just stories from the books in this case.<br>Respect <br>

... On the other side, the priestesses pour the blood of the bull between two double axes, symbols of the Minoan gods. Almost all of the ancient Greek sculptures and buildings were brightly painted, but very few traces of the original colors remain. That this painted design has survived with so much clarity and depth of color is astounding, and it holds keys to our knowledge about religion in ancient Crete. Makes me want to go pee on a pile of rocks and see what I can uncover.

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 :(

... with me. It's an amazing feeling to be surrounded by such beauty, to feel so grateful that I'm forging this path on my own, and yet to feel so strongly the love of people an ocean's length away. Thanks, guys! But, we all need real live people around us, too. So I wandered to the nearest bar and waited a reasonable 20 seconds or so before announcing to a roomful of strangers that it was my birthday. This is the wonderful thing about ...