Last Day in Crete

Palace of Knossos

Our Minoan poses in front of the horns of consecration.

Matala Beach

Bliss

Sarah Robin and I

Yesterday began by visiting the Palace of Knossos, the largest of all of the Minoan cities. Since it is so large and so famous, there was also a huge crowd of Greek tourists. I wish I could show you photos of their wardrobes. Men wander around in short shorts, and women wear see-through pants. The "palace" was cool, and it was the only place that we've had to pay to use the bathroom so far. After the three hour tour of Knossos, our bus took us to the city of Gortyna, the capital city of Roman Crete. When I say city, I'm not actually talking about your typical metropolitan area. Mary Louise refers to them as pretend towns, but basically they're the ancient city ruins of the various time periods we are studying. The next pretend town we went to was called Phaistos. It was better than Gortyna, but still it was just a big pile of rocks with a nice view. After the site seeing, the bus took us to a beach town called Matala. We ate lunch there and then laid out on the beach. It honestly felt like we were in the movies with the precious blue and white umbrellas. There were topless ladies, but boys don't get too excited because they were mostly old women. This beach had rocks we could climb on and little caves we could go into. I didn't climb as high as Austin but I did climb high enough to take an amazing picture of the beach. I wish we could have been there for more than two hours! The bus then took us back to Heraklion so we could board another mini cruise ship. This boat was older than the one before but it still had good food!

XOXO,
Elizabeth