One last thing...

Before leaving Crete we had one last thing to see (we had skipped it on her first day when it was in the high 90s ). We headed via bus to Knossos palace. We were lucky enough to have Panos, our guide, walk us through it with commentary for an hour and a half. Even better we beat the crowds. We got there at 8:30 AM and by the time we left at 10 there were hordes of people waiting in line. It's one of the stops people make when they leave the crew ship. The lesson here folks is to always go to the most popular sites right when they open. Then you can walk and enjoy it without being surrounded by people. Knossos Palace was the capital of Minoan Crete. It was inhabited beginning with a Neolithic settlement around the seventh millennium BC. Around the 1375bc which was the end of the Minoan civilization.  There is good and bad.  The good is that it gives you an idea of the large size and grander that it must've been. The large storage rooms and vessels give you an idea of how important the olive oil and wine were to this community. There were terra-cotta pipes to drain water or sewage. The palace even had an indoor toilet with a drain for my water underneath. Way before the Roman aqueducts. To think they had those things in that time period is amazing! The bad is that the main person in charge of excavating it (Evans) made some decisions that effected the integrity and originality of the palace. Only 60% of it is how it originally looked. 40% is what Evans deducted it would be based on clues or prior knowledge but he was not always correct current scholars argue. Worse yet when he was rebuilding it he used a mix of original material and concrete which degrades the original pieces and don't provide stability.  He didn't do any of this with malice. He was trying to get the site on the map and to get interest in it. Technology and today's  techniques are also very different back then and they are today. I think that if it had been just an earth recently it would look very very different. After our visit and goodbyes with Panos we headed back on the bus to the hotel. We had a little bit of a wait time before our checkout time and getting to the airport. Got to the airport way ahead of time. It's so small an hour or an hour and a half would've done plenty but you don't know until you've done it.. Then a quick 35 to 40 minute flight over to Athens. We walked across the street from the airport to the hotel. We're staying at the Sofitel right at the airport because our flight tomorrow is at 6:25am which means I'll have to be there a little after four. Hope I sleep quick!

Peacocks or geese were often at the palace because they're so territorial they would give warning signs if someone invaded their space. They were good watchdogs back in the day!

(concrete reconstruction of Evans)

(Evans concrete recreation)