Trying to Be Artistic!

Ok, this one was just for fun!

An appealing place to relax?

Fancy a cocktail?

That's where I want to be!

Fun and Games

The hotel hosted lots of activities. There was a gym, spa, football, beach volley ball, archery, water sports, tennis, table tennis, etc...

We've never done archery and still haven't! We went to the class, but by the time we found it, they had already started and therefore we were unable to join because they had completed the safety aspect of it.

Andy and and another guest who we had become friends with decided to have a one on one footy game. Some other guests came down and convinced Andy to have a go at volleyball with them (he's never played before). Turns out he was quite the natural and a very competitive guest insisted on being on his team!

Other activities we enjoyed were of course swimming and relaxing (if you call relaxing an activity!)

Greek Health and Safety in Action!

We had to take a photo when we spotted this! This workman was fixing some fencing we think about 20ft high. He's sat on a pallet that is tied to the crane attached by a hook. No safety harness for him, or even better no Cherry picker to take him up and no hard hat, just a baseball cap!

Yummy Yummy In My Tummy!

As there were 5 restaurants in our hotel, we thought we had to try them out. The hotel's Mexican restaurant did not impress us on our first visit. We ordered fajitas but when they turned up there were no tortilla wraps, we thought they had brought us the wrong dish. We enquired about it and we were told "this is how we do fajitas" If the meat and vegetables don't come in the tortilla's then usually the tortilla's come on the side and you fill them yourselves or so we thought. We really began to doubt our understanding of the dish. We looked around the restaurant as we realised other diners were looking at us, it was then that quite a few spoke and said they had received the same response about the fajitas and that they thought they were supposed to come with flour or corn tortillas as well.

Well we thought, it's only the wraps missing, so lets just eat anyway. Well we didn't have more than three mouthfuls as it really was not good. Quite a few diners just left without finishing their meals.

We did leave without finishing ours, but we gave the restaurant a second chance a couple of nights later and they seemed to have sorted it out as the fajitas came as what we thought fajitas to be, they tasted much much better and the restaurant was full of happy diners. We were told later by hotel staff that there were teething problems with the restaurant, but hoped that they were sorting it now.

The Thai restaurant was unbelievably good. I have never ever had such a good Thai meal outside of Thailand. We went quite a few times, but would have gone more if it hadn't been booked up.

The two continental/ Greek restaurants were fantastic. They were set out in a self serve style with lots of different options. Steph loves Moussaka and it was very good. We love buffet style restaurants like this because you can have a little of everything if you so wish

To toast our honeymoon we treated ourselves to the 2 Michelin Star Al Dente a la carte restaurant. The food was excellent, the staff were excellent and the atmosphere was excellent. We enjoyed prawn starters and steaks for our mains. The above pictures show how good they were.

Heraklion

A trip to Crete wouldn't be complete without a wander around the capital, Heraklion also known as Iraklion. At the harbor is the Venetian fortress, we took a stroll to see it up close. The capital is home to some good shopping, art and history museums and some interesting architecture. We spent an afternoon browsing in the shops and the market as well as taking in the scenery.

We were told that most of the shops take a siesta in the afternoon, but we found that a great deal of shops stay open which was a good job because we needed an additional memory card for our camera. We managed to buy a few trinkets and gifts while we were in the capital.

Exploring Knossos

Knossos

Another day out was to the ancient Minoan Palace of Knossos, this is where the legend of the Minotaur originated from and was the home to King Minos. The palace was built on a hill called Kefala as this was a very good location as it was next to a river which made for a good water supply, it also had good access to the sea and a forest.

The palace has been destroyed many times and each time has been excavated, the palace is believed to have been built and re-built between 2000 BC and 3000 BC. Many archaeologists have tried to excavate the site, but it was Sir Arthur Evans who was able to secure full funding and purchased the place.

If visiting the site, we recommend that you hire a guide as we found them to be excellent. There are plaques around the site, but even though we read a couple, they didn't tell the story as well as the guide and some parts were so busy you couldn't get close to the plaque.

We learnt that the Minoans had a very sophisticated plumbing system in the palace, amazing considering the place is ancient.

The Minotaur legend isn't all that it seems as well, not sure if we should tell you what the experts think or let you visit Knossos to find out? Ok, we'll tell you!

The experts uncovered many art works which are now in a museum in Heraklion, but they have put reproductions in their place. One picture was of a bull with a person jumping to grab hold of the horns, a second person doing a handstand on the bull's back and a third person behind the bull with their hands in the air.

One theory is that these people were kidnapped from villages and forced to play a sport in order to win their freedom back. They would have to grab the horns, somersault over the bull and land the other side. If they didn't get it right then they were almost certain to be impaled on the bull's horns and killed. The legend that the Minotaur was half man half bull is just a myth.

The legend of the labyrinth comes from the palace itself. Experts believe that the labyrinth was the palace as you can imagine that all those years ago something with a lot of rooms would be like a maze to a person when they mostly would only have been in one or two roomed buildings. Knossos palace has around 1000 rooms!

The symbol for Knossos is a two headed axe and this is called a 'labrys' a Lydian word which could have eventually developed into the word 'labyrinth.'

An actual secret passageway or an underground purpose built labyrinth/maze has never been discovered.

Around the site you can visit the throne room, the king's bedroom, wine cellars and although we couldn't get close because it was still being excavated, from a distance we saw the Queen's bathroom and her bath. There were two absolutely huge urns about 9ft high and pretty wide, they were used to keep liquids like oil and water in. The legend goes that a young prince climbed into one and subsequently drowned because he was unable to climb out due to the sheer size of them.

The site has been partly re-built with modern materials to show visitors what certain parts would have looked like, this has received some criticism as some say it spoils the site.

Santorini