Day 8
Hello!
I woke up on day 8 to find myself in Crete! The ferry landed while I was asleep. We boarded the bus, dropped our bags off at the hotel, and headed towards the Minoan palace of Knossos. On the way, we passed so many olive trees and George, our tour guide, told us there were 30 million olive trees on Crete, and that Crete has the highest concentration of olive trees per meter in the world. That’s pretty intense! I resolved to get a bottle of olive oil from the local market =]
We finally reached the Minoan palace of Knossos. I’ve read the mythology about King Minos and his famous labyrinth, so it was cool to check out his enormous palace. According to George, the labyrinth holding the Minotaur referenced in all the mythology actually was just his palace, it’s that big! We walked around the entire complex and George told us some cool facts about the palace. He showed us the throne room, where archaeologists think that a queen sat because the throne is shaped for a woman. We also were shown these gigantic pots that used to hold 1.5 tons of honey. They are so heavy that no one has been able to move them! We also learned about the game of bull-leaping/flipping, which seemed pretty dangerous to me. Basically the participant runs towards a bull head on, grasps the horns, and leaps over the bull as it bucks it head. The momentum the person gains is used to perform somersaults and other acrobatics over the bull. And I thought the running of the bulls was dangerous! After exploring the castle ruins, we headed to the Archaelogical Museum and saw some artifacts from the labyrinth. One mysterious one was this circular disc that archaeologists don’t know the purpose of. It was the subject of a mystery documentary on National Geographic!
After the museum, we were free to explore Crete, so we headed to Lion’s Square, which is one of the centers in Crete. We went to this delicious gyro place (clearly I’m an addict) and I fell even more in love with lamb, it’s delicious! Greek gyros are definitely the best. After lunch we walked around town a bit. There were lots of shops to buy olive oil, and I got a bottle for my parents. It’s always yummy with some warm crusty bread and a bit of balsamic vinegar! That also happens to be the Greek way of eating bread too. As you can tell, I’m definitely loving the food here!
