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

Beautiful Santorini

We took a day out to visit Santorini, an island which was formed by volcanoes and still is active today. The last eruption was in 1950. You can take a boat to visit the interior of the volcano. Santorini enjoys year round sunshine and is a beautiful place to photograph.

When we went there it was lovely and hot, but very windy. The villages are extremely picturesque, especially Oia.

Oia is nestled into the cliff face and has beautiful views, the volcano included. We took a lot of pictures here! Some of the houses and hotels had swimming pools right on the edge overlooking the sea. We learnt from our guide that the blue colour used on the buildings is partly to keep mosquitoes away as apparently they don't like blue!

We visited 2 villages, Megalochori and Oia, the capital, Fira and enjoyed a drive around the island.

We took a ferry from Heraklion to Santorini and joined a guided tour. As we were only going for the day, we thought the best way to see the island would be a guided tour, but if you have more time, then do it yourself with a guidebook as unfortunately on our tour there were some visitors who had no courtesy for others. They didn't keep to time scales and as a result no one had much time to spend in Fira before they had to catch the ferry. The guide didn't seem very helpful, the driver on the other hand did voice his annoyance. As we found out, it would have been ever so easy to tour the island on our own.

We didn't let them spoil it for us and made the most of the time we had.

The island is full of beautiful domed churches and littered with these quaint little windmills, with the windows and doors painted in different colours. Megalochori was made up of winding paths with houses and little courtyards.

Fira was very much the capital, very busy and lots of souvenir shops. Steph reckons she had the best strawberry ice cream ever in Fira!

Caldera Palace

The sun came out and we were able to fully appreciate the hotel and it's surroundings. We discovered a local bar just across the road from the hotel that played the football - much to Andy's delight! We walked up along the coast and found the area was lovely, just what we wanted as we didn't want the Malia setting. Don't get us wrong, we love a good night out, just glad we weren't staying there throughout our whole holiday. The hotel's beach was good, the hotel obviously looked after it as the adjoining beaches weren't so attractive. The sea was beautiful, but you had to be careful when entering as there were sharp rocks. We did most of our swimming by our room. The pool water was pretty cold at first and took some brave attempts to get in! Once you were in though, it was lovely. We were pretty lucky with our room as the sun came over to our side at about midday and stayed until sunset, the guests on the other side lost the sun at midday. We bought a bat and ball, an underwater camera and some goggles, as we are big kids and like to have a bit of fun!

Our Honeymoon

Our Honeymoon, May 2009. There were no real dramas with getting to the airport, we were well organised this time. The flight was ok, just the usual annoyances.
Upon arrival in the capital of Crete, Heraklion, we were greeted with a luxury, private coach, just for our hotel. This we warmly received as that meant there would be no dropping off at other hotels which would have increased our transfer time. This was a little concern of ours as we had booked a resort.
We booked a 5 star hotel on a 5 star resort. We don't normally do this, but we thought it's our honeymoon and why not? The hotel happened to be all inclusive as well, we like to eat out and experience local restaurants and cafes but again thought it is our honeymoon and as it turns out, there were lots of different types of restaurants at the hotel.

First impressions were excellent, it certainly looked 5 star. Our room was incredible. The bed was huge and so comfy, didn't think we'd ever get out of it! The bathroom was all marble with a huge power shower with all the bells and whistles and the bath was a jacuzzi bath! We had booked a 'swim-up' room and certainly got that! Open up the patio doors and step out onto our decked porch and then straight into the pool! There was a like a river/pool that snaked around the hotel and had steps up to all the ground floor rooms.
We cracked open our bottle of Champagne and toasted our honeymoon. We went and had a wonder around and ended up at one of the pool bars for a Pina Colada and a lager. Here we met another honeymoon couple.
Slowly we went back to our room. We were both very tired from the trip as we had to show our faces at a birthday party hours before we flew!
Steph nearly slept in her clothes she travelled in as tiredness, Champagne and Pina Coladas make you very sleepy!

The first two days were a bit windy and rainy. The locals said it was the worst weather they had seen for a long time. No matter, we became excellent at table tennis and propped up the bars in the hotel and out! We wanted to wait for the sun to come out before we went exploring. We didn't have to wait long, day three to the end of our honeymoon, we couldn't have asked for better weather.
The honeymoon couple we met had gone to one of the sites we had on our list when it was raining and said they didn't enjoy it much as they rushed around it because otherwise they would have been soaked through.
We were staying in Crete longer than them, so stuck to our plan of waiting for the rain to stop.

A view from our flight

Our huge and most comfy bed

We were impressed with our room

Our Swim-up room

We stayed at the Caldera Palace in Analipsi, Crete.

Update

We are back from our trip to Wales. It was a brilliant trip and we managed to get the best of the weather which was a bonus. The dogs seemed to have the time of their lives!
We stayed in Tal-y-Bont and visited Barmouth, Tywyn, Harlech, Porthmadog/ Black Rock Sands and Shell Island. Trip report to come soon after Crete.

For our first anniversary we are off to London for a weekend. We have booked tickets to see Thriller Live in the West End and will be visiting as many attractions as we can fit in!
Can't believe it's been nearly a year already since we got married!

Time flies when you're having fun!

Crete report on it's way.

Sealife

Recently we went to the Sealife Centre in Birmingham. We had some 2 for 1 entry tickets, so thought we would use them. We enjoyed the visit. Andy was a bit disappointed that the Sharks weren't very big (and too quick for photos!) and the Piranha tank wasn't bigger! So a trip to the Blue Planet Aquarium in Chester might be on the cards. The photos we took weren't too bad, as flash photography is not allowed.

We're off to Wales with the dogs for a holiday, so we will start the Crete report when we get back. Wela i chi!

Sealife Centre Birmingham

We paid £15.50 for the both of us using the Merlin 2 for 1 ticket.