Walk Like a Cretan
Jun. 7th, 2007 10:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
deirdreToday, Iraklion.
It's weird getting back to a language I can puzzle out words in (I don't read Arabic at all, and far fewer of the signs were in English, though some were in French). I'm still really slow with the Greek lower-case letters, but they're less common on signs, thankfully.
We took a tour to Knossos palace -- and that's it. That might not sound like a lot, but the palace is 22,000 square meters, which translates to 236,000 square feet. In other words, several acres. Of course, there were (they think) four floors, some of which have been reconstructed.
The current trend in archaeology isn't reconstruction, so the earlier expedition that reconstructed parts of Knossos has come under criticism. That said, I think they did an interesting job of making it seem realistic, even if it is imperfect. We took a lot of pictures, which will be up on flickr as soon as I get home.
After our tour, we went back to the ship (because we'd forgotten our Euros since we'd not carried them with us the last couple of days) and then took a taxi up to the edge of the pedestrian center of Heraklion. We were trying to get to a square, but I got diverted by the sight of a restaurant (by that time, we were hungry). Instead, we found it was basically a coffee bar -- and that there were three of them clustered together.
Still, we got onto the right street, and found a place called Izmir Kebap, which had wonderful food. We were joined by Carl (friend of a friend of therinth's) and his wife, and then our favorite waitress, Nalan, came by along with her assistant (whose name I have unfortunately forgotten).
I got another acupuncture appointment today. It's probably good I have two days off from acupuncture (I've had it three days in a row) so that the changes can settle in.
Tomorrow, Santorini.
It's weird getting back to a language I can puzzle out words in (I don't read Arabic at all, and far fewer of the signs were in English, though some were in French). I'm still really slow with the Greek lower-case letters, but they're less common on signs, thankfully.
We took a tour to Knossos palace -- and that's it. That might not sound like a lot, but the palace is 22,000 square meters, which translates to 236,000 square feet. In other words, several acres. Of course, there were (they think) four floors, some of which have been reconstructed.
The current trend in archaeology isn't reconstruction, so the earlier expedition that reconstructed parts of Knossos has come under criticism. That said, I think they did an interesting job of making it seem realistic, even if it is imperfect. We took a lot of pictures, which will be up on flickr as soon as I get home.
After our tour, we went back to the ship (because we'd forgotten our Euros since we'd not carried them with us the last couple of days) and then took a taxi up to the edge of the pedestrian center of Heraklion. We were trying to get to a square, but I got diverted by the sight of a restaurant (by that time, we were hungry). Instead, we found it was basically a coffee bar -- and that there were three of them clustered together.
Still, we got onto the right street, and found a place called Izmir Kebap, which had wonderful food. We were joined by Carl (friend of a friend of therinth's) and his wife, and then our favorite waitress, Nalan, came by along with her assistant (whose name I have unfortunately forgotten).
I got another acupuncture appointment today. It's probably good I have two days off from acupuncture (I've had it three days in a row) so that the changes can settle in.
Tomorrow, Santorini.