Head west young lad (& 3 gals)

Today we headed west on a day trip with a guide. His name was Panos and we traveled in his (nice) van to see some smaller towns to the west of Heraklion. First stop was Margarites. There we saw a second-generation Pottery creator (thrower?) who showed us how he created some things on the pottery wheel. He explained some of the very interesting traditional pottery. He digs the clay out of the mountains because he said he cannot buy that quality of clay. It is dark gray and depending upon the temperature and how it is fired (electric/wood) the pottery turns out to be light gray, dark gray, terra cotta or brown. It was very interesting. He made it look so simple but after having a semester class in sculpture I know how very difficult it can be. He was amazing and the pieces were so intricate. Then we went to a small archaeological museum of ancient Eleutherna. Its collections range from 3000-1300bc. No pictures were allowed because they haven't put together their museum book (so people aren't allowed to take images before they have a chance to print them).  The holy monastery of Arkadi was up next. It has a two aisle church in it. The Northern side is dedicated to the transfiguration of Christ and the southern is dedicated to Saint Constantine and Saint Helen. That means it has two altars also. The monastery played an important part in the history of the Ottoman occupation. 943 Greeks (mostly children and their mothers) took refuge in the monastery. After three days of battle they all piled into the gun powder room and chose light it and sacrifice themselves rather than surrender to the Turks. Not much of the original buildings remain because of the warring but it has been rebuilt. The last stop on our tour was the very cute town of Rethymno. We had our lunch and strolled around. Art was in heaven because we stopped at a small shop where they made baklava. We saw how this guy stretched the phyllo dough to cover a whole entire table. The dough started like the size you would use for pizza and he went around the table and kept stretching it to cover the whole table. Holy cow! This town had cute shops and would've been the perfect place to spend an afternoon exploring but we only had about 45 minutes before we had to head back. Next time!