We woke up early and were on the road by 8.30, a good job since the journey is a 2.5 hour and 200km epic! We made it to Iraklion in excellent time, and that’s where the adventure began. B thought that we’d missed the turning off the E75, which is somewhat like the A1 when it’s just a single carriage way but people go at 100km/ph , so we set about trying to find a way back onto the E75. We went up roads and through estates that we probably shouldn’t have and after going up a hill that put Hardknott Pass to shame (this road was literally about an 80% incline, thank you Dad for teaching me to drive very well!!) we finally made it back to the main road. I’d forgotten that Greece seems to have 4 rush hours, people have a 3 or 4 hour break in the middle of the day here so obviously head home or to the beach or whatever, and we hit every single one of these rush hours!! And man do people not have a sense of any highway code here! To start with I found it endearing that people drove like mad things but after driving through Iraklion I began to feel very differently, how I didn’t kill a motorcyclist I will never know! They just appear out of nowhere and duck and dive between cars, if there’s a gap just about big enough for them they take it!
After another car journey that I constantly exclaimed that I was glad Dad had added to my driving lessons and taught me to be a confident and capable driver, we finally arrived at the parking for Knossos, we popped the car underneath an olive tree and headed to the little taverna to get me caffeine. Thank goodness for frappes, although I could have really done with a nice cup of tea!
Now Knossos to me conjures up images of a large town with winding paths and olive groves and a mighty castle in the middle (you can tell I hadn’t really read the guide book when planning this trip!) we happily paid our 6 euro entrance fee and began walking round the palace of Knossos, I wouldn’t say I was disappointed but I couldn’t see this as the place that the Minotaur had been held. Yes it was a truly impressive ruined palace, that would have been a force to be reckoned with no doubt, but it didn’t quite match what I had in my head. In my mind Knossos was a deep, dank labyrinth with terrifying twists and turns, and yes I imagine that this is indeed underneath all the fancy palace, but I was a little disappointed. Especially since a fancy 20th century archaeologist had rebuilt bits of the palace and painted things. It felt like it had been robbed of it’ former grandeur by a man, thousands of years later, deciding how he thought it should have looked. So my advice for those who love Greek mythology is to keep reading the books, I know it was a long time ago that all these things happened, but the picture in your head is better than an archaeologists picture, trust me.
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