Previous Day (Rhodes)
Destination: Greece & Turkey
Duration: 18 Days 17 Nights (Aug 06~Aug 23, 2012)
Day 12: Crete
Waking up in the morning and noticing the ship was still
moving towards the Heraklion port, Costa Atlantica would dock at Heraklion from
9am to 11pm this day. Our destination of the day was Crete – the largest island
of all the Greek islands. The island was ‘mythological-ly’ (is this even a
word?) famous for minotaur – you know the creature with the head of a bull on
the body of a man and hunting anyone dare to step into its lair of a labyrinth?
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| Still Cruising in the Morning |
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| An Airplane! |
We were supposed to be joining the English speaking shore
excursion tour from Costa but it was cancelled again due to lack of demand. I
guess English speaking guests were either too few or they just preferred to go
for a beach tour. It posed a terrible predicament on our plan as we did not plan
anything for this island as we always expected to join the tour. So the
question was: do we stay at Heraklion or do we go off to somewhere else (Our original
excursion tour would’ve included 3 locations – Knossos, Kritsa and Agios
Nikolaos) without any pre-planning?
Our first task was to find the bus station which we found
successfully and we got ourselves bus tickets to Knossos which only cost EUR1.30/pax
for one way. Knossos is one of the main archeological sites at Heraklion which
is about 20-25minutes bus ride away from the main bus station near the port. Knossos
is a Minoan Palace which was believed that was destroyed by a tsunami wave
caused by volcanic eruption of Santorini.
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| Bus Station near Heraklion Port |
Knossos was packed with tourists when we arrived and the
crowd increased by the hour. It was so crowded and so hot that we could hardly
really see anything in details. The main difference between this archeological
site and the others that we’d visited was the beautiful shades of colors - a
somehow reconstruction controversy by the archeologist Arthur Evans.
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| Lining Up to get tickets into Knossos (EUR6/pax) |
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| A Circular Pits! Is this where they kick their enemy down like "300"? |
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| The Archaeologist - Arthur Evans |
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| Ruins! |
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| Colors!!! The South House |
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| 2 storeys building |
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| Painting! |
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| The famous Horns of Minotaur! |
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| The Grand Staircase |
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| See the long line? They are lining up to get into the throne room... |
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| Another Building at the North |
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| Inside the Throne Room |
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| Another View of the Throne Room |
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| The Throne? |
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| Looking at the lines from the top |
After Knossos, we took the bus back to the main bus
station near Haraklion port and there laid a dilemma – how are we going to
proceed with our day? Since we were right at the bus station and at the timing
of 1pm, we managed to get bus tickets to Agios Nikolaos (EUR7.10/pax one way) – one of the destinations
of our pre-planned excursion tour. When we were on the bus, we noticed that the
Agios Nikolaos bus station actually had a route to Kritsa – another destination
of the excursion at 3pm. The bus trip took us around 2 hours to reach Agios
Nikolaos which happened to get us in time to catch the 3pm bus to Kritsa (EUR1.60/pax one way) –
another 20 minutes ride.
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| Random Church on the way to Agios Nikolaos |
Kritsa basically was one of the oldest and most
picturesque villages in Crete and one of its most famous attractions was Panagia
Kera – one of the most important churches which dedicated to the Assumption of
the Virgin. We were quite lost when we arrived at the bus station and had to
ask a few people there before we managed to find the church. It was a long
walk to get to the church and there was no picture allowed inside. Entrance fee was EUR3/pax.
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| Walking Walking Walking |
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| Panagia Kera |
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| Another view of Panagia Kera |
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| Sammy was there! |
We had to rush back to catch the 4.30pm bus back to Agios
Nikolaos thus it was a rush visit in the village. We didn’t even think of
taking pictures of the village itself! *facepalm* Here is a picture of Kritsa
from Wikipedia which we saw that day but had totally forgotten to take a
picture. In fact, we were standing at the base of that village debating whether
the church in that picture was Panagia Kera – it was not though. Panagia Kera
was at the opposite direction.
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| Kritsa |
We got back to Agios Nikolaos and were wondering whether
we should take a walk to the coast but decided against it since it seems like a
normal coastal town. We got our 5pm bus tickets back to Heraklion and reached by
7pm. So our Agios Nikolaos visit was basically their main bus station! Hahhaa…
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| A late lunch at Agios Nikolaos Bus Station |
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| Agios Nikolaos Bus Station - the only place in Agios Nikolaos that we visited! |
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| View from the Bus when we get back to Heraklion |
Once we reached Heraklion, we walked straight into the
town and actually went through a tunnel which happened to be a landmark which
we didn’t know at the time and was joking about it when we walked through.
Venetian castle was next before we went into the maze of Heraklion town. We tried
to follow the recommended route from the city map and managed to find the Agios
Titos (where a wedding was taking place!), the city hall, the Morozini Fountain
and the stunning Cathedral of St Minas. But the town’s vibe was of a big city
vibe which lack of authenticity or uniqueness of its own. I would say Rhodes
was more interesting.
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| The Tunnel |
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| On the way to Venetian Harbour |
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| The Venetian Harbour |
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| Ducks! |
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| Doggie! |
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| Venetian Castle |
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| Another View of the Venetian Castle |
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| Random Building at Heraklion |
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| Agios Titos |
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| City Hall |
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| Morozini Fountain |
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| Cathedral of St Minas |
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| A full view of Cathedral of St Minas |
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| A little Church beside Cathedral of St Minas |
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| Inside the Cathedral |
After a while we just got tired and walked back again to
the port. I would say taking a 5 hours return bus trip to Kritsa definitely had
taken a chunk of time out of our visit at Heraklion. Perhaps our trip would be
better if we were to just stick to Heraklion alone but our lack of planning
definitely cost us. Anyway, it was definitely a privilege to visit a beautiful
village such as Kritsa. If you really wished to visit these 3 places in one day - a ground tour with transportation is highly recommended.
Our dinner of the day consisted of:-
Pasta: Penne with salmon, cream and vodka & Orecchiette
pasta sauté with broccoli, pecorino cheese and pepper
Main course: Grilled scorpion fish fillet and lightly
breaded chicken breast
Dessert: Sorbet and Mango and coconut cream
Today food was just okay – nothing special there. The sorbet was disappointing.
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| Fish Fritters |
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| Penne with Salmon, Cream and Vodka |
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| Orecchiette pasta with broccoli, prcorino cheese and pepper |
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| The Chicken |
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| The Fish! |
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| The Disappointing Sorbet! |
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| Mango & Coconut Cream |
Our night ended with the theater show again with Costa Atlantica heading to Kos Island. This day was unfortunately one of the more disappointing days of our visit though – guess lack of planning did caught up with us.
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| The Show |
Next Day (Kos)
Masterpost (Click this to get to day by day link)
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