The Cretan Diaries

When you’ve handed in your dissertation, what else is left in life at all, anyway?

On the list of completely impractical things I have done in my life, this one ranks right up there.

I had no job, money was tight, it was raining all the time in Sheffield, and I'd been sort of semi-depressed for a few days... I didn't know what the future was going to bring, and that's always unsettling.

Originally, my friend Petra and I were just going to nip over to Normandy and visit the D-Day beaches and look at the Bayeux tapestry, eat a little French food, and come home. Simple, easy, right?

But from Sheffield, the plans turned weird. While it was not impossible to get to Normandy, it was complex. While it was not expensive to get to Normandy, it was not cheap, either. And while nothing we wanted to see was esoteric or off-the-beaten-track, getting from one place to another was arcane and difficult, and the internet failed to provide clear answers.

And then we saw it. An ad for a last-minute, cheapo flight plus accommodation to the island of Crete. A studio apartment on the beach for seven nights, and within (figurative) spitting distance of the Knossos Palace site. The weather listed as sunny and 24 degrees C. For about £50 more than what we'd been figuring for four scrambling, irritating, chilly days in Normandy.

You do the math.

We won’t go into the ways in which the British Rail system always conspires to get you to your destination in the most inconvenient way possible. I had nearly two years of UK life under my belt by then, and was not at all surprised to discover that we would need to spend the night in Gatwick Airport in order to be on time for our flight.

But eventually, there we were, on Cretan soil at last, standing in the line-up for our bus to Gouves, madly stripping off layers of jacket/jumper/extra t-shirt, and then in turns haring off to the loo to swap our remaining cold-weather clothes for lighter ones.

It felt great—blazing hot sunshine does not appear regularly in Sheffield—but a bit of a shock to the system. Petra, being a pale Northern sort, got out the sunscreen. I just basked.

On the bus, we had a Thomas Cook rep giving us the lowdown on completely irrelevant stuff, interspersed with factoids like about who got off the bus where, but ours was only about 20 minutes or so along once we were out of the airport. We also received a little brochure that told us that the next day, at 12:30, we would be meeting with another TC rep who would know how to get around and what to see and do.

We got to the fabulous Blue Sky self-catered apartments. Okay, perhaps they are not luxury villas fit for the rich and famous. They were clean and open, and while there was only minimal cookware, we had a terrific courtyard complete with three very adorable Cretan kittens. And really, with a shingle beach only 150 metres away, another sandy beach about 150 metres further, and all that lovely sunshine, what could the luxury villa really offer us that was so essential? (Okay, better food, maybe. We had cheeseburgers and chips at the pool bar. They were, ummm, all right, I guess. It was not especially memorable.)

We went for a wander and found some minimal amounts of groceries. Possibly because it was so nearly the end of the season, or possibly because the idea is to get people out into the restaurants and bars, the selection was odd, sketchy, and difficult. For the next seven days, we ate feta, bread, olives, tomatoes and cucumbers, tinned dolmades and tinned meatballs in tomato sauce, as well as chocolate mini croissants and a form of pre-toasted bread with a Greek version of Nutella spread, for most of our meals. Once a day, we would find a restaurant and have kalamares and tzatziki, or spinach pies and cheese pies. And retsina, or Greek coffee, or freshly squeezed orange juice. We did find pre-made tzatziki eventually, so we ate a lot of that.

We found the various beaches, and could see that even on the restaurant front, we were not spoiled for choice. Part of what made this trip even remotely possible was that it was the last week before the entire resort system on Crete shuts down for the winter—and about 85% hadn't waited for the official date, but had already skedaddled.

But the important parts were there: like Miami CSI, the Aegean never closes. The sun was still willing to beam down onto us.

Petra did make it to the pool that first afternoon—I collapsed on the bed and attempted to nap without success. I had gotten to the point where I was so exhausted my body couldn't figure out how to unwind. Eventually, though, after a snack late in the evening, I did sleep... quite soundly for about four hours, and in strange-dream hour-long snippets thereafter, until about nine the next day.

On Wednesday morning, we had toast and coffee at the Pool Bar and then went off to the beach for a swim in the ocean... lovely stretches of sand and sun beds (during the season, we discovered, one has to pay a small charge for these, but no one was bothering by this point). The water initially felt chilly, but after a moment or two, one realises it is really quite warm, and very, very salty when a really enthusiastic wave comes up and smacks you in the face. The saltiness makes floating very easy.

At noon, we were dried off and changed, and lying by the poolside awaiting our session with the Thomas Cook Tour Rep who, we had been assured, was going to have all the information we would need about getting around Crete, and what to see and do.

Dear Reader: They lied.

Laura was a nice, under-educated, empty-headed girl in her mid-20s, who owned some snorkelling equipment but had little enthusiasm for it (she is afraid of sea-creatures), was uninterested in history or archaeology, knew almost nothing about the geography of Crete, or the local resort area (or even about the town she currently lived in). She talked up the Sunday boat trip to Spinalonga (the "Island of Tears") a former leper colony (unaware that it had—as we later discovered—been a fifteenth century Venetian fortress and later an Ottoman Turk stronghold, prior to it becoming a quarantine village of lepers in the early to mid-twentieth century—but I'm getting ahead of myself here.)

"It's a sad story," she told us. There was even a book about it, presumably with all the sad details. However, as the trip included swimming off the boat and a promised "beach barbecue," and Petra really liked the idea of jumping off the boat into the Aegean, we decided to splurge on this.

Laura's main preoccupation was arranging her own return to England the following week. She gave some vague and sketchy directions on how to get to Knossos, was utterly flummoxed and even more vague on how to get to the Palace at Mallia (which is the village where she, herself, LIVED so this was particularly strange), and characterized the actual Cretan hill-village of Gouves (as opposed to the beachside resort) as "old." Since it was nearly 2 PM, we decided to walk up to the village in hopes that perhaps a wider range of groceries might be available (no, there wasn't), and possibly some interesting older architecture...

The oldest building in Gouves is the tiny chapel, which is late nineteenth century. There weren't really any other buildings earlier than about 1950, as far as I could tell (practically speaking), and no shops, although there were a couple of tavernas, and the walk took about 40 minutes, mainly uphill. But it was pretty, and filled in some of our afternoon without being so strenuous as to require any following-day recuperation.

In the evening, we went to a restaurant (also called the "Blue Sky") a few blocks away, ate kalamari and tzatziki, drank retsina, and looked out over Homer's wine-dark seas, a mere 20 metres or so away from our table.

On Thursday, we got up reasonably early and walked out to the main road to first catch the bus to Herakleion, then a connecting one to the Palace of Knossos. Knossos is the extremely famous and iconic emblem of the "Minoan" civilisation—its story grabs you with the romance and the blend of myth and archaeology, and the images are among some of the most accessed bits in archaeology: the "Bull Leapers Fresco," the "Snake Goddess" sculpture, the Phaistos disk.

It was an interesting trip. We had to wait quite some time for the bus (scheduling is a pretty notional concept in Crete), but it goes into the interchange in the city and drops you mere feet from the place for the connecting bus to Knossos. Then you careen through the hills up to the palace site, across the street from a row of souvenir shops and tavernas. We enjoyed a little "pre-shopping," earmarking the things we thought we might want to buy, and then headed into the main attraction, ignoring the endless harangues of the guides. We knew that attaching two newly-minted archaeologists to a tour might be fatal—for someone...

The trouble with Knossos is that it was constructed over time, in several phases (It burnt down once, at least, so right there you've got two distinct builds) and it probably was not as Sir Arthur Evans portrayed it, the palace of a Priest-King. It seems more likely that it was a kind of organised community space, with storehouses and workshops and ritual precincts... I dunno. Like I said, with multiple phases, it may have had different uses over time.

The guides, however, tell it as pretty much a myth writ large—there isn't an actual bull-man "minotaur," but according to the guides there actually was a "King Minos" (singular, you'll note, despite the complex spanning many centuries); and from what we did hear, we were wise not to risk being part of a tour. As it was, we spent a couple of hours wandering through, with a sideline argument over the reliability of the fresco reconstructions, a couple of attempts to ascertain the phasing, and a lot of picture-taking.

Knossos is confusing (and no amount of guide would have made it less so, really, if one asked the right questions) and ultimately, one sees it for the "history of archaeology" value more than anything else. One of the reasons people want to be archaeologists is from reading about sites like these: the romance, the potential, the drama of the excavation... the Indiana Jones effect.

Eventually, we had covered most of the site, and were at the hot/hungry/fractious stage of the day. We went back out and found a taverna and ordered gyros with chips and some retsina, smoked cigarettes and relaxed (because in Greece you still can!), then sauntered through the shops and blew a bunch of money we really didn't have.

Back in Herakleion, we got off the bus early and made our way to the Archaeological Museum. Despite the fact that it was in a "temporary" state, and likely a lot was in storage—I think they were renovating the building—we saw all that incredible stuff: the Bull Leaper Fresco, the Snake Goddess sculpture, the Phaistos disk... and much more. It was well worth it, all of it including Knossos, just to know that you'd seen it for real.

Finding our way back was helped immeasurably by Petra—running solely on instinct—finding a superb shortcut back to the bus interchange!

We did eventually get to the Palace at Mallia, by way of a whole lot of people (including the TC rep who lived in the town of Mallia) telling us the absolute wrong things about how to get there, other people telling us the wrong hours of operation for the site, a really fantastic lunch with extra-cute Cretan kittens for company, and then the discovery that, in actual fact, there was a bus that would have taken us practically to the doorstep of the palace.

But this was one feature of Crete I absolutely advise everyone not to miss.

Mallia is plainer then Knossos, although built along the same labyrinthian design. You can walk freely among the ruins. You can touch the walls. You can see the ongoing archaeological investigations, with much less fanciful descriptions of what was probably going on. It feels entirely more real than Knossos.

And then there was… the Tour Guide Episode…

For Sunday, we had booked the trip to Spinalonga ("The Island of Tears"), so we were up at 7 AM (very difficult to do on holidays) to get ready. We had our bathing suits and towels, our cameras, our cash. (Travel Representative Laura had carefully written this list out on the back of our ticket for us, because a one-day swimming/bbq/sightseeing tour is so complicated to plan for: One might forget that one needs to wear a bathing suit when swimming on public beaches...)

It wasn't Laura who was our tour guide. I walked around the corner of the bus and my immediate thought was that I'd strayed into Toon-Town. The guide, Rolla, looked like Cruella deVille on the tag-end of a massive bender. She was wearing a brilliant, shiny, scarlet trench coat and she had a sinuously sinister, Greek-accented speaking voice that was creepy in the extreme.

"Goo-oo-ood moo-oorning... La-adies and gentlemennnn, pleeessse. We will be stopping at five more plaaaaces to pick up the follllo-owing passengers."

(And she then proceeded to list their names, and include many personal details, especially about the six other people who would be meeting us at the pier in Agios Nikolaos because they had elected to take a taxi. Perhaps they had been forewarned about Rolla.)

These announcements were repeated after each stop. Since it was nearly two hours before we reached the pier, this became more and more disturbing as the morning progressed. Between these announcements, Rolla pointed out various self-evident things, for no very apparent reason, and also gave us some interesting information regarding Bronze Age Minoan family life, which, as an archaeologist, I was very glad to be set right on.

"La-a-adies and gentlemennnn, pleeassse, this is the resssort to-o-own of Mallia, this is how we calll it in Creta. I willl spell this for you: M-A-L-L-I-A, Mallia, it is a popular ressort for younger people. It sitss on the Bay of Mallia, which isss why it isss callllled Ma-a-allia. Alssso here is the Palace of Mallia, which isss where the brother of King Minos would come to spend his summer holidayssss."

(I was, as noted, completely unaware that King "Minos" was, in fact, an actual, singular, and known individual [perhaps we should have had a Knossos tour guide after all], much less that he had a brother whose holiday itinerary was so well-documented. I really must keep up on my reading.)

There was almost a non-stop monologue for the entire trip. To make it extra-creepy, these news bulletins were preceded by a few moments of Rolla breathing heavily into the open mike, as she, presumably, was gathering what passed for thought, although it really was more like a stream-of consciousness poetry-reading. Not content with merely spelling out every resort's name, she translated and explained the names of places like Mirabella Bay ("La-a-adiess and gentlemennn, pleeeasse, mira is Italian for admire, bella is Italian for beautiful, the Venetians came here and admired the beauty of the bay, and so they called it Mirabella, because they admired its beauty, so you can see, even the Italians could see how beautiful this Bay is").

She described in detail several times how to tell imported bananas from domestically grown ones (Cretan bananas are much smaller) and informed us that potatoes are also grown on the island.

We considered making notes, because it seemed as if there might be a test later on.

Rolla also described some local jewelry available in Agios Nikolaos and exhorted the "gentlemen" to buy diamond rings for "their good wives." This part went on for some time: My guess is that she gets a kickback from the town jewelers. Possibly in the form of puppies.

We got to the pier. We got on the boat. For the most part, Rolla was now mercifully silent, barring the odd announcement about picking up the chits for the entrance fees for the Island part and occasionally getting on the mike to name, spell out, and generally gossip about a few resorts along the way, one of which was extremely exclusive.

Unfortunately for us, although it was the end of the season and due to how many boat trips to Spinalonga doing the same route, the various slots have to be carefully arranged. Consequently, although we had hoped to do the island part first, then the swim-and-bbq, we did not.

We anchored in a lovely spot. I weighed my options. Petra elected to jump off the boat. As a nice, middle-aged lady who was not feeling particularly adventurous, having had less than my required amount of caffeine that morning, I got off and walked along the shore to the beach. (Petra swam to meet me, and actually beat me there, which was surprising.) The water was warm and unbelievably clear and turquoise, and the sun was shining. It was like inhabiting a travel brocure, actually, which does not often happen. The beach was small, but after the first 15 or 20 minutes, most people began to head back to the boat. I was as mystified as you are: We had an hour before lunch would be ready, so...? There was a brief period where the beach was not covered with exhausted tourist parents and their overly-aggressive children, and that was nice.

The barbecue-ing took place on the beach, but the consumption took place on the boat. This was rendered difficult because a) we had to balance our trays on our laps, b) the boat bobbed alarmingly with every passing wave, and c) it was rather crowded. Most of us put our wine on the floor and ate the marinated porkchops with our fingers because, as I am sure you are aware, plastic knives are unequal to the task of actually cutting anything firmer than cottage cheese.

After a while, we upped anchor and went on to Spinalonga. The island had been the site of a 15th century Venetian fortress, then taken over by the Ottoman Turks and then, around 1904, was re-used as a leper colony till the late 50s. "It's a very sad story," Laura had told us. "There's a book about it."

"It's a very sad story," said one of the women on the boat. "There's a book about it."

"It'sss a verry ssadd ssto-orrry," Rolla informed us. Not only was there a book about it, but a 24 part miniseries on Greek TV. We could watch episode three on Monday night, and then on Tuesday, we could catch up on episodes one and two. On Greek television. In Greek, presumably. She said this several times throughout the day. It's a very sad story, or so I'm told.

Petra and I ditched Rolla (who was giving a guided tour of the leper colony part) almost instantly on arrival. Alicia, an American woman we'd met at the Blue Sky Apartments, stayed with it and filled us in on the sadder bits—I strongly suspect these were fictional events from the novel (that's right. It's a NOVEL, based on the "true" stories).

We, on the other hand, wandered around, clambering up to the tiny churches on the higher slopes and investigating the Venetian cisterns and the fortifications. Despite Rolla's assertions to the contrary, there were some remains of sixteenth century frescoes on the apse in one of the chapels. There was not nearly enough time to see everything, and we were not amused to find that our time on the island was limited so that we could be shuttled back to Agios Nikolaos for shopping.

Rolla made sure to remind the "gentlemen" about the diamond-buying requirements for their "good wives" by repeating one more time some information about the very exclusive resort in the next-bay-but-one from Agios Nikolaos. This resort has suites that cost, according to Rolla, 20,000 euros per night, not including breakfast. Lady Gaga stays there. (And one time, this prince from the United Arab Emirates came to stay there, you know? With his six wives.)

"Thi-i-ink of it, gentlemennn. Six diamond rings, at leassst!"

Agios Nikolaos is actually quite lovely. Expensive, sure. But pretty. The harbour can host those massive cruise ships, of which there were two moored up when we were there.

It has a lake, which used to be a freshwater body, but at some point, the fishermen figured a safe harbour for the fishing boats was more important and connected it to the ocean, so now it is a mixture of fresh and salt water.

The town has a postcardy cuteness that is very appealing. After a bit of minor souvenir hunting, Petra and I settled down at a lakeside taverna for Greek coffee and people-watching. We did a quick jaunt out along the lake edge (there was a teeny chapel and some sweet little boats) and then went to meet up with the bus.

The return journey was just what you would have expected. Rolla did the entire monologue in reverse, in case anyone hadn't been paying attention the first time, including reminders about the six people who had caught a taxi instead of staying with us, and she cross-examined the women as to whether they'd gotten their diamond jewelry. Then, in the midst of explaining that we were at the end of the tourist season (in case we were wondering why 80% of the businesses were closed up, or why Thomas Cook was selling off seven night stays for one-third the normal price), Rolla began to tell us about how the owners of the resort businesses would be packing up and going back to their farms and orchards to work there for the winter. Rolla herself had work to do at home, too.

"I willl be doooing my cooking and my cleeeaning and my wassshing up. You know. Woman ssstufff."

Puppies scurry to hide under the sofa. Tourists tremble and attempt to memorise the spelling of Hersonissos just in case there is a pop quiz. And somewhere, there is a Greek suffragette, rolling over in her grave.

We were forced to recuperate the next day by going back into Heraklion and shopping.

Traveler’s Tip: At the end of the season, everything in Heraklion is on sale for cheap, cheap, cheap. I got snake-goddess earrings for half the regular price, and a hand-embroidered rucksack for almost nothing.

And then there was the bookstore. We walked by and Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” was blaring out of the open door. How could we not stop in?

The proprietor’s name was Niko. He was very sweet. He plied us with ouzo and read us poetry.

We almost missed our bus.

Actually—we did miss our bus. I asked the driver twice to make sure he was stopping at Gouves, and he said, "Yes, Yes," very impatiently.

And then went on a completely different route that bypassed Gouves and ended in Hersonissus, where he summarily ordered us off the bus.

It was late. It was dark-ish.

Oh, well. We were hungry, so we went into a tavern and ordered a meal. The waiter brought us drinks we had not ordered, insisting that we must have them. Vodka and raspberry soda. Do not ever drink this. It is vile.

And then he charged us for them.

But we did manage to get on a bus that did go to Gouves, at long last. Not without the help of some lovely Greek ladies who threatened to beat up the driver if he did not let us off at the stop we wanted to be let off at, instead of the place where he felt was more convenient for him.

(In point of fact, these were not idle threats. One lady did, indeed, bean the driver with her handbag, to make herself perfectly clear.)

After the excitement and revelations of the previous days, we elected to spend our last day soaking up the sun and sea on the beach, with an appropriate time out for kalamare, tzatziki, cheese pies, and retsina at the Pellas Cafe and Snackbar around noon. I discovered that the reception/office at the apartments actually had a book exchange, so I swapped out my old books for a couple I hadn't read, and we commandeered a couple of the sun beds. Petra swam, I lazed, although the constant offshore breeze made the UV index deceptive. I got very very brown, with my suit making for some interesting patterns over my torso.

In the evening, we treated ourselves to a really big meal at a taverna called "Filoxena," with more retsina and raki. We were stuffed. (I had lamb kleftiko, Petra had swordfish, and there was, naturally, kalamare with tzatziki involved. Someone had told us it was the best kalamare they'd ever had. We felt this was not quite accurate: It was good, but we'd had better.)

Giovanna had texted us to tell us that it had been very cold in Sheffield—down to 1 degree (C), and this raised some trepidation. We debated the possibilities of staying on (if the feral kitties can survive a Cretan winter, we reasoned...)

The trip back was unadventurous and boring... except I have to say that the airport in Herakleion has made absolutely no concessions to the War On Terrorism (TM): They x-rayed our luggage, although it did not appear to me that anyone was actually watching the screens, and there was the obligatory metal detector, but no one prevented us from carrying gallons of fluids on board. Nor were they particularly interested in anything else about us... only a cursory glance at our tickets to make sure we were boarding the right plane. The duty-free was not terribly exciting, the benches were not very comfortable, and squished into aisle seats in a section with not one but two screaming infants close by, and no functioning Wi-Fi made for a rather tense trip.

OTOH: At Gatwick there is a Port of Entry section labelled "UK and EU" and then there is the other one, helpfully labelled "Rest of the World." (Some of you out there might think I am kidding. I am not. The British use of signage to convey multiple levels of communication not solely concerned with imparting basic information is worthy of study in its own right.)

Both labels take you to exactly the same place, where you fill out identical entry cards, and talk to exactly the same people about exactly the same things.

After a three hour layover, we found our train back to London, then caught the one back to Sheffield, waited in a patient queue for a taxi, and were greeted at home by Giovanna, who had decorated the lounge with happy skeletons, waving hello.

Sometimes the worst of times are the best of times.