Getting off the boat was a welcomed moment for everyone in our group. We got outside and met the two men who would make the rest of our stay on Crete one of the most enjoyable experiences ever. These two men were George, Prof. McCoy's good friend and guide-extrodinaire of Crete, and Aleko, the loveable, flirtatious, and almost picture-taking-loving bus driver.
In continuance of the boat's perpetual suckage, there was no breakfast, so we bussed through the city of Heraklion until we found a hotel and went in for their breakfast. Our first Cretean breakfast introduced us Cretean Orange Juice, which is not unlike American orange juice in the sense that yes, it is orange. However, this is where the similarities end. It looked and tasted like Tang, which makes me wonder if it actually was Tang. If so, the Creteans must have an intense love affair with Tang, because that is all we were given when we ordered 'orange juice.' The standards of any Greek breakfast were there as well, which means a lot of pastries filled with goat's cheese.
Still tired from the boat (disembarkation began around 6:30 or so...), we were all a bit draggy that first day. But, ever the chipper skipper, Prof. McCoy loaded us back onto the bus and took us to the site of the Minoan Palace of Mallia and later on to Gournia.
The site at Mallia was pretty impressive. They have most of the palace and a lot of the outlying town excavated. George was great, hopping around and showing us all the ins and outs of the palace as if he actually lived there at one point. Palace complexes are a big part of Bronze-Age Crete History. They were the centers for trade and administration for various districts, and these places have EVERYTHING. They are not palaces in the modern sense of the word-sure, the royal families lived there, but they were pretty open to the public and had the main courtyard where games would be played (especially their favorite, bull jumping), religious functions would take place, and general agora-esq activities.
After looking around for a while, we found the old altar at the center of the courtyard and took our Treasure Hunt Oaths.
Treasure Hunt Oaths?
Okay, so in the interest of making our stay on Crete both fun and interesting, Prof. McCoy came up with this great idea to have a Treasure Hunt. The rules? Five teams would solve a series of riddles. After two weeks, the top three teams would compete to find a treasure box, the contents were unknown. Sounds fun, right? What could possibly go wrong when you add competition to a group trip and split people into teams? Okay, enough with the petty sarcasm-in the end, the Treasure Hunt caused way too much drama and did a good job souring part of the trip. More on Treasure Hunt Drama later, though.
On to Gournia!!
When we first pulled into Gournia, it struck everyone as less impressive than anything we had yet seen. Remember, we've just come from a cool Palace site, not to mention we have the Parthenon/ Athens still fresh in our minds. However, it turned out to be pretty interesting. At the top of the site, there was an amazing view of the coast which took almost everyone's breath away.
After Gournia, we took the bus to the town of Sitia and to our (ocean front) hotel. It was gorgeous. Some folks took a nap and went out later in the evening but I decided to take a wander about the city and then went to bed early. I didn't want to wear myself out too early-and the wander was pretty worth it. Sitia is a neat little town with some cool places to explore.
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