{"id":92,"date":"2011-05-08T07:23:34","date_gmt":"2011-05-07T19:23:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hailes.co.nz\/blog\/?p=92"},"modified":"2011-05-10T06:19:16","modified_gmt":"2011-05-09T18:19:16","slug":"92","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hailes.co.nz\/blog\/2011\/05\/08\/92\/","title":{"rendered":"About in Crete"},"content":{"rendered":"

Friday 6th \u2013 Heraklion \/ Knossos and about in Crete<\/strong><\/p>\n

A really nice breakfast again down in the hotel.\u00a0 We seem to be getting cooked breakfasts and not continental as expected which is more points for you Renee.<\/p>\n

We headed off to see if we could catch a bus to Knossos to see the birth place of civilisation as we know it.\u00a0 We find a bus stop in the square and a machine to disperse tickets and a young lady only to willing to give us a hand to play the machine.\u00a0 Our tickets are still being printed as the bus arrives but no problem and we get on board for what works out to be a 20 minute bus ride.\u00a0 Knossos is a bit more organised and it costs us E3 to get in because Ngaire lied and said we were Poms and over 65.\u00a0 It was hard to believe that people would think I was over 65 but we did have one Pom and two over 65ers in the group.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Three of us decided to get a guide.\u00a0 It cost us E60 but as we had come so far we really wanted to get our value out of it.\u00a0 It was a bit like another Pompei only 2,000 years older.\u00a0 If it really had been as the people had surmised then it was truly amazing.\u00a0 Clay water pipes and a water delivery system.\u00a0 The columns were actually trees placed routs end up.\u00a0 The place was a huge palace with supposedly 1440 rooms.\u00a0 One and the largest of three such palaces in Crete of very similar design and the only one that was being restored.\u00a0 The weather was quite cold and just as we finished it began to rain.\u00a0 Fortunately it didn\u2019t come to much.<\/p>\n

We caught the bus back into town.\u00a0 For some reason we couldn\u2019t work out this cost us nearly double what we paid coming out.\u00a0 It may have been because we had to buy tickets off the driver.<\/p>\n

Back in town three of us had a cheese pie for lunch and Doug a filled roll.\u00a0 Wouldn\u2019t be in a hurry for a cheese pie again, pretty dry and mostly pastry.<\/p>\n

We agreed to meet for wine and nibbles at five and each of us went off in respective couples to explore the city.\u00a0 Margaret and I got up on what I thought was the old wall but what could have been a brilliant tourist attraction was nothing.\u00a0 I think back to my walk around the wall of Chester and this was nothing.\u00a0 We found some famous authors grave \u201cKazantzakis Tomb\u201d on the highest part of the wall but that was not much more than a marble slab and a wooden cross in the ground. We dropped back into the city and wandered before going back to the hotel.\u00a0 Ngaire had found an even cheaper wine E2.90 for 1.5litre plastic bottle.\u00a0 I reckon tomorrow it will be 2litres in a plastic bag.\u00a0 We still had no problem demolishing it with a few chippies as we reviewed all our photos.<\/p>\n

We headed out for a meal at about 7.30 and found some upstairs restaurant.\u00a0 There was hardly anyone else in it so maybe that was a sign.\u00a0 It was so so but nothing special.\u00a0 Doug had barbequed Chicken.\u00a0 I had a beef Frap thing without the Frap and the girls shared a Pizza.\u00a0 We went for a wander after tea but not much around and a very cold wind so it wasn\u2019t long before we were back in our hotel.<\/p>\n

Really hard work we were tired.<\/p>\n

Saturday 7th May \u2013 Our last day on a Greek Island<\/strong><\/p>\n

A lovely day but that cold biting wind remains.\u00a0 A big breakfast before we venture out.\u00a0 We are off to Athens today so need to be back at the hotel by one to get a taxi out to the airport.<\/p>\n

The Archaeological Museum is first stop.\u00a0 Unfortunately that was under renovation but apparently most of the good stuff had been taken out and shown in temporary accommodation.\u00a0\u00a0 It was all stuff that had been found at Knossos.\u00a0 Really interesting.\u00a0 Somebody must have been good at jig saw puzzles as a lot of the stuff had been glued back together. Nods was fascinated with an etching of a love triangle although she didn\u2019t want to be the one in the middle.<\/p>\n

We headed back into town where if you stayed in the sun and sheltered it was really nice.\u00a0 Got in the shade and unsheltered it was bloody cold.\u00a0 We wandered through town again and down towards the fort that was guarding the port on the water front.\u00a0 The waves were crashing too high to be able to walk around it and it was all closed up anyway.\u00a0 Ngaire & Doug had tried to get around it yesterday and were beaten back by the waves then as well.\u00a0 We headed back into town and had a coffee at Starbucks,\u00a0 yes I know you would never see me in one in Wellington but we were desperate for a half way reasonable coffee.\u00a0 It was ok and good for that part of the world.\u00a0 It was back to the hotel to pick up our bags and off to the airport.\u00a0 Our plane was half an hour late but a very enjoyable short flight to Athens in an Airbus A320-200.<\/p>\n

Arriving at Athens we decided to be adventuresome and catch the Metro into town.\u00a0 By the time we had our tickets we worked out it was E7 cheaper than the taxi and still left us with a bit of a walk at the other end.\u00a0 Not to worry we were here for adventure and that\u2019s what we got.\u00a0 When we got out of the train at a change over station I discovered I no longer had my wallet.\u00a0 A pick pocket or just lost it from my pocket I\u2019m not sure we did go through an interesting pack squeeze to get out and of course us with our suitcases made it worse.\u00a0 Bugger shit dam.\u00a0 I had about E120 in it but of course my only card.\u00a0 I rang throught to NZ and had my card stopped and am going to have to rely on Margaret for the rest of the trip.\u00a0 There are positives in everything.<\/p>\n

We hopped off the Metro at Metaxourghio and found our hotel straight away.\u00a0 Renee there was talk of upping out rating on the hotel as the sun was shining onto out balconies and it was beautiful and warm. Some even thought the new rooms were bigger.\u00a0 I think that was just the effect of the smaller rooms we had had on the islands.<\/p>\n

Doug went out and brought this horrible bottle of wine which we managed to polish off before for setting out to find somewhere to eat.\u00a0 We found this really nice Chinese restaurant upstairs and down some back alley.\u00a0 The food was awesome and there was talk of breaking the never repeat rule.\u00a0 I had spicy chicken, Margaret a fantastic lemon Chicken, Doug sweet & sour prawn and Ngaire Sweet & Sour Pork.\u00a0 We all cleaned our plates.<\/p>\n

We went out and found a hole in the wall machine and back to the King Jason.\u00a0 We have the next two days to explore Athens.<\/p>\n

Tired again, it is tough as you know being a tourist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Friday 6th \u2013 Heraklion \/ Knossos and about in Crete A really nice breakfast again down in the hotel.\u00a0 We seem to be getting cooked breakfasts and not continental as expected which is more points for you Renee. We headed … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hailes.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hailes.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hailes.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hailes.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hailes.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.hailes.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":95,"href":"https:\/\/www.hailes.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92\/revisions\/95"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hailes.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hailes.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hailes.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}