Sunday and Monday

Hello all! Sunday was another long, busy day so I didn't have time to put together a good post then. Brett and I got up on Sunday and headed off to Heraklion to see the site at Knossos and the museum in the city. Both of them were most awesome as they have opened up new parts of each!

We went out to the site first upon arriving in Heraklion. It's not a terribly long ride out. While there we of course wandered the palace, including taking a peek at the South house, which you hadn't been able to walk down to last year. 

The reconstructions that Sir Arthur Evans carried out on the site are educational, in their own way, and rather controversial, though they have long since become a part of the history of the site itself.

The rest of the site is equally nifty, preserving little details like the pavements:

This is the great front entrance, as it were, to the palace. And things like kilns:

And me!

There was even a peacock outside as we were leaving!

Then Brett and I went for a hunt for the Royal Villa. It is one of the large outlying houses around the palace of Knossos. There was a sign for it on the road, but it took a bit of hunting and a walk though a giant parking lot, a bit of a little village, a play ground and a trip down a flight of stairs to find it:

We couldn't see too much, though. It looks like it is being worked on and we could only peek through a fence at it from the road above.

Then we had lunch with an awesome view:

And saw this on our walk to the museum:

The Heraklion museum holds a lot of the treasures of Cretan archaeology, and had been closed for a number of years while the building was being updated. There's a loooot of stuff in there now and the museum itself is lovely, though not quite complete just yet. So here's a few of my highlights.

A Neolithic figurine of a woman, often interpreted as a fertility figure:

This thing which was just cute:

This impressively massive model of one interpretation of what Knossos would have looked like:

Shiny things:

And a whole bunch of other stuff which I won't flood you all with. ^^ That being seen, there was ice cream and a bus ride home.

When we returned back to Pacheia Ammos, it was just in time to clean up and head down to get a bite to eat at the restaurant where a flamenco dancer was performing. ^^ Two of them actually! With a guitarist. Maria, who works at Mermingas, had a friend who was studying flamenco in Spain and happened too be around to put on such a lovely performance. Then off to bed!

Monday so far has just been work, though I think I am going to hop over and see Mochlos real quick after work.

Which we ended up doing! It was quite nice.

Now to find some dinner and then bed to get ready for another day of work. Hope all is well!