Adventures in Crete!

Once again, I am sorry it has been so long since my last entry! The past two weeks have FLOWN by!!! Last Monday evening, our whole group from school went to the island Crete until early Saturday morning, and since then this week has been crazy. Right now, I am on an airplane flying to Serbia listening to music and drinking a lovely cup of coffee! I’ll fill you in on what life has been like in the past couple of weeks. I’m already starting to forget details…pathetic really! If you ever wonder why I write SO much on this blog, it’s because my memory lasts as long as a goldfish’s!

A few weekends ago, wherever I left off the last blog, we had classes on Friday, and then for the weekend I relaxed in Athens. I don’t remember exactly what I did honestly, but I took it easy knowing that our Crete trip was going to be quite an ordeal! I did a lot of relaxing and hanging out with friends. It’s been great to meet new people and build friendships! It has been a really great time. Fun cafes, late nights, and lots of laughing… sounds good to me!

The following Monday we had classes as usual, but met up at school at 7 pm to get ready to take a ferry to Crete! It was insane! So we hopped on busses, then ferries to take an overnight ferry to Crete. We were put in sleeping cabins according to alphabetical order, which ended up fun since I met some people I don’t usually see or hang out with. Other than that, I wandered around the ferry some with some friends and ended up going to bed pretty early, as most everyone did. We arrived at about 6 or 7 am on Crete. I slept pretty well, even though it was totally weird sleeping on a boat! I definitely woke up really confused hearing odd announcements and a phone ringing beside my head!
We then got some breakfast, or rather, bread, a piece of cake, and a hardboiled egg! Next, we hopped back on busses and began our Cretan adventures! Our first drive was a bit over an hour, so most people slept on our busses! Lots of bus sleeping took place over the week for sure! We went on Tuesday to sites called Malia and Gournia, both pretty cool! We were studying archaeology of temples in Crete and looking at what a little town might have looked like, We also had lunch and visited an American Archaeological Research Center for East Crete. This place was pretty interesting. After hiking up a hill to get to it through thorns and grass, we entered the Center. This is where they bring finds and where the drawing and architectural people work. It is cool because they have each stage of the archaeological process there, with cleaning, organizing, reconstructing/conservation, scanning, studying, photographing, drawing, you name it! After that, we headed to Agios Nikolaos to check into our hotel. We wandered the cute little town, stared off into the water, and had a nice dinner!

Wednesday, we visited Lato, checking out remains of a little town and wandering Heraklion’s Venetian walls and remains. We had a nice little lunch in Heraklion, including gelato. We also headed to Knossos that afternoon! Pretty awesome place, wandering what the palace could have looked like and thinking about the exciting history of it all! After that, we bussed back to our hotel for the night. The evening was spent relaxing and eating, as usual. But, Wednesday night we did some table hopping. We started with dinner. We then moved to the next restaurant over to try a traditional dessert on Crete (I forget the name) with cheese, pastry, cinnamon… So good! Then, we went to the next restaurant over for some little Greek honey donuts. Then, we headed around the corner for some gelato to finish off the evening! Scrumptious!!!

Thursday, to all of our dismay, upon heading to the Heraklion Museum, at 8 30 am, we could not get in. The electricity was out and they could not open the doors, etc and we had to walk away… Maybe the coolest museum on Crete. Sad, but regardless, we trudged along, sleepy and a bit sad, to Rethymnon. We checked out the little museum for a while and checked out this crazy Venetian fortress, Fortezza. This place was pretty cool, and huge! It overlooked the water, as well as the city, and was just fun to run around in! I feel like as a 10 year old being there with all of my friends, life could not have been better. After Rethymnon, we headed to Chania for our final evening on the ground. Chania was gorgeous and had a great lighthouse and strip of restaurants and shops along the water. I loved my evening there, complete with crepes, wine, and gelato. My favorite part was maybe walking to the lighthouse… It seemed close, but was quite a little hike just walking in a roundabout way. But it was well worth it. We could see the stars and the town by night! So nice.
Friday was different than expected, since our hike of the Samaria Gorge was cancelled. We ended up taking a trip to Phalasarna (I think) and checking out another little archaeological site that had something to do with pirates and such. All of us had the beach on our minds! We then went to a beautiful beautiful beautiful beach on the Western coast of Crete. Beautiful day, beautiful sand, beautiful blue water, could it be better?! We finished up Friday with some nice shopping and wandering of Chania, then transferring to our Ferry. It was pretty similar to the first one, except woke us up at 4 45 am! Our ferry back was so nice, pretty new, and I think the bed was actually better than my bed in Athens!

I’ll spare you all the details, but it was really a great week. Nice to be away from the busy city of Athens and see an island and a new place! It was crazy sleeping in a different hotel every night and being in a new place all of the time.

Anyway, that’s that with my Crete trip. I’ll update photos as soon as I have TIME + INTERNET. It’s tricky to come by these days at the same time. I’ve got a big paper due on Wednesday, so after that I’ll be freer for a while!

I’ll update soon on the rest of the week. I’ll be in Serbia soon!!!!