Monday 14^th June – Khania, Crete (Knossos)

35:31.123N 24:01.153E

With the weather forecast saying that there would be no wind to sail for the next few days, followed by the probability of a gale at the weekend, we decided to stay here in Khania, hire a car, and take a look at the island.

We picked up a car around 8.30am, and headed east towards Knossos along the national road that runs the length of the north coast from west to east.  This is our first experience of driving in Greece ourselves, normally we are on a bus.  Fortunately, away from the cities, the roads are not very busy. 

For the most part the national road here is single carriageway rather than dual carriageway, though it does have narrow hard shoulders for the most part.  Consequently the driving style is for slower traffic to straddle the road and the hard shoulder to allow faster traffic to pass.  So, we drove along carefully, observing all the road signs and speed limits whilst all the locals whizzed by at Mach 3 and overtook regardless of double white lines on sharp bends. 

There were a few speed cameras at the side of the road but these appeared to make no difference to their attempts at the land speed record.  Upon closer inspection, some cameras were clearly not in use - Richard noticed that the only thing one was likely to photograph was a high speed flower swaying in the breeze whilst another maybe a Mach 3 mouse in the undergrowth.

Then realisation struck; speed limit signs and white lines must merely be advisory here, just a hint or suggestion that you may wish to slow down or not overtake, but if you don’t want to and wrap yourself around a tree, that’s fine, don’t say we didn’t warn you.  No nanny state here.  I adjusted my style a little – if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em; I like driving here! 

We arrived at The Palace of Knossos, a few kilometres outside Iraklion, the capital of Crete, around 11.30am.  It was much busier than we had expected, obviously a few coach loads of visitors had just arrived.  We were wondering why it was so busy but later saw a large cruise ship in the harbour at Iraklion which explained it in part.  It wasn’t packed though and we were able to get around easily once the tour parties had been marched through.

The Palace of Knossos is from Minoan times (3000-1400) BC and it is an important site as not much had been known about the Minoan civilisation until Knossos was excavated.  The work was carried out by Sir Arthur Evans in the early 1900’s.  Knossos is also the mythical home of the Minotaur, who was kept in labyrinth there by King Minos.

Whilst excavating, Sir Arthur Evans started on renovating the site and so some parts of it have been re-built using concrete and then painted (it works better than it sounds).  Beside, we must give him credit, he did at least pip Schliemann (who excavated Troy and Mycenae) to the post.  Apparently Schliemann had had his eye on it but wasn’t able to forge an agreement with the locals.

We spent a good couple of hours walking around the site (right knee in tact), managing to time our visits to the highlights when the large tours groups weren’t queuing there.  Whilst it probably doesn’t rate as one of our best trips to date, it was worth seeing.

After this we went for a short drive further inland as this is the major wine producing region of the island, we found a large vineyard where we stopped off to take a break and enjoy the view.

Iraklion is a large sprawling city, about the fifth largest in Greece.  We decided driving around it was not for us so headed back towards Khania stopping off at a couple of the other coastal ports along the way. 

Our first stop was Rethymno where we had a stroll around the marina.  The old Venetian town and harbour is quite attractive but to the east of town is a long strip of hotels and apartments along the beach front with wall-to-wall sunbeds for holiday makers to roast on.

Just before arriving back in Khania we stopped off in Soúdha to see the small fishing harbour there as a possible stopping off point in the future.  Much of the bay though is prohibited access as it is a major naval base; the rest is given over as the main harbour for commercial traffic for Khania.

Knossos

© Pyxis 2010