On to Mykonos

After spending all day Sunday with the Minoans, we were pretty tired. We caught a bite to eat on the way home and then went back to the hotel where I updated the last blog entry. By then, the sun was setting and we wanted to get one last walk around Heraklion's harbor.

We walked around the sea wall until the sun set, and then had one last dinner on the beach in Crete. When the dinner was over, they brought us a desert that was something like doughnut holes with ice cream, covered in honey (included as part of the meal). We got back to the room, got packed, and listened to the 9:30 AM church service live at Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa over the Internet (7:30 PM our time). We were asleep by 10:00 PM.

Before we knew it, the alarm was going off. We had a taxi pickup scheduled for 6:30 AM. By 8:15 were were on our way to Mykonos, with one stop in Athens.

In Mykonos, instead of waiting around for the bus, we just took another cab, and were at our hotel by noon. Talking to the taxi driver (who was born and raised on Mykonos) we found out that all the buildings on the island have to be built of either natural stone, or have the characteristic whitewashed, cubic, round-cornered shape that everyone loves.

You do get to choose what color to paint the door and shutters, but that is all. Most of them are blue.

We unpacked at the hotel and then took a nice walk around the town. Little twisty lanes once again, but imagine every lane filled with high-end boutique fashion and jewelry stores. We stopped at one of the restaurants on the harbor and had some lunch, since we hadn't eaten breakfast because our plane was so early. 

Then, we went back to the hotel and read on our balcony until sunset. It was a really restful afternoon.

Right at sunset we walked over to the ridge of windmills that overlooks the town and took some pictures. A passing tourist offered to take our picture, and then, we walked down the coastal path, looking at the churches and the sunset. It was spectacular.

Delos - the Vacation of the Future, Today!

Unless you're my age, you probably won't remember this slogan from Delos, the animatronics-run-amok theme park from the movie Westworld, with Yul Brynner as a robot gun-fighter. The real Delos was one of the most important religious sites during the golden age of Greece (about 500-300 BC). On Tuesday morning we took a boat out to the island to look at the site.

It's hard not to compare Delos to Knossos. Like Knossos, Delos was excavated around the turn of the century, and like Knossos, the excavations on Delos are monumental. Unlike Knossos, though, I didn't get the feeling that I was looking at a reconstruction. The French archaeologists who excavated the site seemed to want to simply uncover what was there.

Some of the pieces (the Naxion Lions for instance), have been duplicated on site, but most of the items you see have been cleaned and restored, but not really recreated. The originals of the items that have been replicated are shown in the museum at the site. (Although a few of the best pieces that were found here are in the museum in Athens.)

Undoubtedly one of the reasons that the Delos site lasted as well as it did is because of the building materials. Marble columns, like those used in Delos, last through the centuries, while the wooden columns used in Knossos don't.

Likewise, the mosaics that decorated the floors and walls survived almost as if they had been laid in this century instead of almost twenty-five hundred years ago. The frescos on the walls though, like those in Knossos, barely survived at all.

We walked around the site, using both the Rick Steves and the Lonely Planet guidebooks, and managed to see all of the main sights, except for the Sacred Cave on the top of Mt. Kynthos. This Sarcophagus was next to the Temple of Herra.

This was the amphitheater. As you can see, it's only partly been restored.

This lion is on the South Stoa of Philip the V, heading over to the Sanctuary of Apollo and the Temple of the Delians. This would have been the cross-beam on top of the columns lining the boulevard.

We even walked over to the Sanctuaries of the Foreign Gods almost to the top of the hill, where we took the picture at the top of this blog entry. Looking the other way, down the hill to the bay, you can see the extensive ruins and the Sacred Harbour of Delos.

We were having so much fun, we missed the first boat back, and had to wait until the 1:30 PM boat returned to Mykonos. When we got back, we were both starving so we went over to the only recommended restaurant in our guidebook that was open for lunch. When we got there, we found that they had closed for the season. (It really is the very end of the shoulder-season here.) Instead we had a light lunch of souvlaki pita sandwiches (just hit the spot), and headed back to our hotel for a quick swim in the pool and to update the blog.

Tomorrow, we're heading out to Naxos and Paros by ferry. A new adventure.