When I first planned this part of our journey, I was trying to get us back to Athens by 22 June, so our trip through the islands was kinda rushed. We also settled our boat tickets from Crete to Athens at Santorini for fear they might be out of space (we got a double room on a ship for 60 EUR each, for an overnight trip from Crete to Athens). Anyway, I kinda did end up boo boo-ing. I somehow miscalculated the dates, so we ended up having an extra day in Crete.
Long story short. Suddenly, there was no rush for us to do anything as we had extra time. So … we woke up at the early hour of 12 noon. Heh. Sauntered down the street, and on the way to town, we saw a little restaurant, and ended up eating – you guessed it – another gyros pita. This one was stuffed with a massive amount of fries. After our very slow lunch, we went into the center of Heraklion. It was kinda fort-y. I actually like that Heraklion is city-like. So we could go into shops and stuff, and not feel like outlandish tourists over here.
Getting around was kinda fun. Stuff was in the Greek alphabet, so was our map. After spending more than a week in Greece, we still sucked. So trying to figure out the street names was kinda fun for us. In any case, we did manage to wander into a few churches, and one which was turned into an art gallery.
The heat in Greece is pretty serious, so in the late afternoon, we ended up going to the History Museum, for some education, and eh, for some respite from the heat. It was a pretty neat two story exhibition, which covered the history of Crete from its ancient civilization to the present. My favourite is probably their special exhibition on literature from Crete. Apparently, Nikos Kazantzakis, the author of Zorba the Greek, is actually from Heraklion!
St. Catherine of the Sinaites Church
St. Mark’s Basilica
Bust of Nikos Kazantzakis
Wanderlust 