As previously mentioned... this is a historical post from a few months ago.
I was in Crete for a week and had a weekend to see some sites. Saturday the 25th was the celebration of Greek independence day. My coworker (Hou) and I hung around the city of Hania and watched the parade. It seems that the entire region got together for the parade... they had all of the emergency services, schools, and military represented. Hou and I watched the whole thing... afterwards we grabbed a gyro and then headed out to see some more of the island. We drove from Hania to the western part of the island.
As we left Hania, we followed the national "highway"... basically a wide two-lane road with no enforced rules... passing is perfectly acceptable at any time. We reached the end of the official highway at a small town, Platanias. Just outside of the town was a small church built into a cave. Hou and I stopped to take pictures of the church and discovered that it had a tunnel that went under the road to the sea. Below are a couple of pictures from that pit stop.
I was in Crete for a week and had a weekend to see some sites. Saturday the 25th was the celebration of Greek independence day. My coworker (Hou) and I hung around the city of Hania and watched the parade. It seems that the entire region got together for the parade... they had all of the emergency services, schools, and military represented. Hou and I watched the whole thing... afterwards we grabbed a gyro and then headed out to see some more of the island. We drove from Hania to the western part of the island.
As we left Hania, we followed the national "highway"... basically a wide two-lane road with no enforced rules... passing is perfectly acceptable at any time. We reached the end of the official highway at a small town, Platanias. Just outside of the town was a small church built into a cave. Hou and I stopped to take pictures of the church and discovered that it had a tunnel that went under the road to the sea. Below are a couple of pictures from that pit stop.
 Coastline of Crete |  Church in a Cave |
Continuing west, we reached the town of Platanos where we decided to follow a sign that marked some ancient ruins. We drove through a very small town with narrow streets. As we emerged from the other side, we were treated to an amazing view of the valley, mountains, and sea. We stopped and took pictures and video of the area. Hou and I decided that we should buy the restaurant that they were building and turn it into a retirement home and then retire there. Below is the panorama of the view. We wanted down into the valley and took a look at the ruins, then drove over to a small beach... probably a nice place to visit in the middle of summer. From the beach, we headed back up the hillside and ended up driving inland through a bunch of small villages and towns until we came back around to Palatnis and eventually back to Hania. A very good day of driving for sure.
 Retirement home |  Beach North of Retirement Home |
On Sunday, we were treated to an unexpected surprise... daylight savings time. Hou and I had agreed to meet around 10:00a. I came downstairs for breakfast thinking it was 9:00... the food was gone and being cleaned up. Usually breakfast runs until 10:00. When I went back upstairs to my room, I noticed that the clock on the phone showed that it was an hour later than I thought. Hou and I ended up meeting at 11:00... this should have been our clue that the day wasn't going to go well. We had planned on going to Iraklion to see the Palace of Knossos.
Hou and I left Hania around 11:30. We stopped for lunch at a small taverna about half way to Iraklion and had a pretty nice lunch. The taverna had a very nice view of the green valleys full of olive trees. As previously mentioned, Crete has a very diverse terrain... the coastline has beaches and inland is a mixture of rocky mountains and green valleys. This is an example of the green valleys...
Green Valley - View from Taverna
After lunch, we continued to Iraklion where we followed the signs to Knossos. We figured we had to be close since it was only 5 km from the highway. The entrance was apparently blocked by a bus as we drove by it, so we never even saw it. We ended up driving south to the interior of the island and eventually made our way around a very large valley to a monastery that had a museum of religious artifacts from way back in 1970... seemed odd. From the monastery, we came back up the valley and ended up cutting across the middle. We decided to drive up to the top of Minoan Peak to see if we could see much of a view. Of course it turned out to be very cloudy at the top, so not much of a view. We tried to go up to the archeological site there but it turned out to be closed.
 View from 1/2 way up Minoan Peak |  View from top of Minoan Peak |
After an adventurous drive down the mountain, where I taught Hou how to drift around turns using the hand break :), we headed back towards Iraklion. We decided to take a look at an ancient aqueduct that was marked on the side of the road. We drove off the main road down a dirt road. After wandering around and taking a few pictures, we headed back out. On the way back out, I took a wrong turn. We ended up coming out onto the main road in a different spot. Right in front of us was a small hand written sign that said "Knossos Palace Parking 100m ->" We accidentally found the palace!! We got to the entrance at 5:20p. The palace had closed at 5:00. As I said before, that was just how the day had gone.
We left the palace and headed into Iraklion. After about 30 minutes of going in circles, we finally found our way out of the town... the signs were very confusing and NOT helpful... plus we didn't have a map of the city. SO, in a whole day of driving, we ended up not really seeing anything as planned.
Better luck next time...
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