Saturday's post - Knossos and a ferry trip.

Saturday was our last day on Crete. F had the feeling we should possibly have tried to see more,  but that would have involved driving around and what does that teach you really?  

Yesterday (Friday) she walked along every lane and track in our little village, and followed a few of the tracks out of town into the countryside to see what does around there. The sun shone on her investigation, and rain came down again when she came back to report.  Her lengthy reply to Angela's comment yesterday contained most of it. Summarized it goes: village dying. Main industries are olives and sheep. Households make their own wine, and grow their own vegetables and chickens. People mostly elderly.

My humans ate of one of the local's chickens and some of their veg, and drank the host's wine with other guests on Thursday, and enjoyed local lamb in a traditional lemon sauce among other local dishes with the host on Friday; all cooked by his Mum.  The dining room of the house is decorated with family photos and folk art of his mother's creation. The men of the family are musicians: father and brother traditional Cretan folk music and instruments, our host a modern rock musician who won a competition in USA with a song he had written about 10 years ago, and was able to move there to live and work. (Home again to help his Mum after his father died.)

Ioannis told us there are 80 people in the village. This year 7 have died. (There was a 40 days ceremony in one of the churches Saturday morning – judging by the cars parked in the village centre people came from all over the district). 

My humans and our host talked and talked and drank wine and some raki until very late, and there was a knock at the door. Another guest had turned up, on foot! Goodness knows where he walked from but he looked like a drowned rat and declined dinner saying he wanted only a shower and to sleep.

We probably learned more about rural Crete by being there than by driving around.

On Saturday we visited Knossos Palace. You sort of have to. If you come to England, when you go home people will ask if you saw Stonehenge, or the Tower of London and the Crown jewels and it seems nuts if you didn't. A guided tour of the Tower can be fun, those Beefeater guys seem to have humour in their job specification. Stonehenge – these days – frankly you get a better view on TV. You certainly don't get anywhere near it.

We did get nearer to Knossos Palace. You may recall they visited another Minoan site (Mykines) last December, so we had something to compare it with. This one was subjected to a substantial ‘reconstruction’,  in concrete, by the archaeologist who headed the team that uncovered it. No one would do that today. It probably seemed like a good idea at the time. It helps provide some vertical scale and give shape and colour to corners and column lined walkways, but it was a bit theme park. The crowds of tourists did nothing to dismiss the theme park feeling, and the street outside lined with trinket shops and people hawking souvenirs and invitations to dine in their fast food establishment didn't help either.

As palaces go it hadn't been built to last. They had used a lot of blocks of gypsum. F was more fascinated by the erosion patterns in the gypsum blocks than the scale and layout of the palace. So guess what most of her photos are of.  The other comment she made was that the information boards expressed what she regarded as an inflated fixation on ceremony and ritual. Uses of various parts can only be guessed at, educated guesses sure, but all the guesses seemed to be ceremony and ritual, as if ancient people didn't live normal lives... sleep somewhere, wash themselves just to be clean (as opposed to ritual washing), go to the toilet, or eat because they were hungry or needed fuel to do what must have been seriously hard work doing stuff we have largely industrialized these days.

We escaped and went to the seaside, watched waves, ate food, and contemplated stuff.  We were able to load onto the ferry 3 hours before departure, so I claimed MY spot.

Pillow on F's bunk.