The beach at Shinaria. Bue sky, bluer water, and a great restaurant in back of us – this is as good as it gets.
Who’d have ever thought Crete would be so cool? A total keeper, despite being populated by a bunch of Cretans. (OK, cretins don’t have anything to do with Cretans. In fact, according to Dictionary.com, the word “cretin” comes from Provençal word meaning Christian, “hence, one who is human despite deformities.” Glad we cleared that one up.)
Dan & Laura at our favorite beach restaurant
Late afternoon both days we were at the beach herds of goats would cross the ridge that ran along the beach, making the area ring with the faint tinkle of their bells
While Crete’s history is particularly notable for being the home of the Minoans (more on that below), Rethymnon was largely built by the Venetians in the 16th century as a midway station between the two major cities of Chania in the west and Heraklion in the east. While the Ottomans conquered Crete in the mid-17th century and ruled it until well into the 20th century, the town is still far more Venetian than Ottoman.
Crete is the largest of the Greek islands with a pretty central location: while 60 miles from the European mainland it’s also just 110 miles from Asia and 175 miles from Africa. Importantly, Crete is the home of Europe’s first advanced civilization, the Minoans, who flourished between about 2600 BC and 1400 BC. So we did a day trip to the ruins of Knossos, just outside the main Cretan city of Heraklion and considered Europe’s oldest city.
Not a lot is known about the Minoans, in part because we have never adequately deciphered their writing, known as Linear A and Linear B. According to legend, King Minos ruled the Minoans from his palace in Knossos and had a labyrinth built to keep his son the Minotaur who had the body of a man and the head of a bull. Oh yeah, and he ate Athenian youths in his spare time. After several of these sacrifices the Athenian founder-hero Theseus, son of King Aegeus, volunteered to slay the Minotaur. When his father thought he’d died in the process (he didn’t), he threw himself into the sea and drowned, thus giving us the name of the Aegean Sea.
Fragments of the Minoans Linear A script in the great museum of Heraklion
The Phaistos Disc, from the 17th century BC. We’ve so far been unable to figure out what it means.
The other big highlight for us in Crete was beach time, not too surprising given the late July heat. One beach in particular, Preveli Beach, is touted as one of the great beaches in all of Greece, number 14 in Lonely Planet’s list of things to see in Greece; not just on Crete, but in all of Greece. For the life of us, we couldn’t figure out why it was so highly rated.
The first day we tried to find it we failed and ended up instead at the insanely beautiful beach in Shinaria, up the coast a bit. You could get an umbrella and two beach chairs for the whole day for about $3.30. With a restaurant that charged less than $15 a person for a fabulous meal … and that plied us with free raki (an anise-flavored Turkish liquor that, when served cold after a meal, all but guarantees great memories of the meal) in the hopes that we would return and spend more money. When we got to Preveli Beach, then, and were seriously disappointed we hightailed it back to Shinaria. The raki had worked.
Bull leaping was a big sport among the Minoans. This fresco shows one womn holding the bull by the horns while a dark-skinned man does a backwards somersault over the bull. A second woman waits in back of the bull to catch him. I think they should revive this sport and put it in the Olympics!
Mark & I loved Crete, and I think I can speak for Dan & Laura in saying they did too. It’s the kind of place we could easily imagine coming back to for a month or so, exploring the beaches, seeing if we could enjoy the Minoan ruins without the life-threatening heat, and enjoying some of the best tomatoes in the world.
The Germains – Elizabeth, Dan, Laura, and Charlie, posing in front of a partially restored piece of the palace at Knossos. They nearly melted in the minutes they stood in the sun to take this.
Arthur Evan’s partial reconstruction of the palace, including the paint job and all, is controversial, though we thought it helped give us a sense of what the whole thing may have looked like 4,000 years ago
The view of Preveli Beach from the parking area. We hiked all the way down, decided we didn’t like it, and came back up.
Me & Mark on the way down to Preveli Beach
Mark enjoying a glass of wine at the aptly named Politiko restaurant. His enjoyment was not unrelated to the fact that the glass of wine cost about $1.10.
Lots of beautiful vases in the Minoan museum in Heraklion. I particularly loved the octopus vase, dating from the 15th century BC.
And finally, this 18th century BC bee pendant, an amazing piece of artistry nearly 4,000 years old