Day 13--Back to the coast
So what’s an early Sunday morning in the hills of Crete like? I’m sitting on our room’s balcony where two chairs and a small round table overlook a narrow street--an alley really. Trumpet vines wind around the railing and bees of all kinds (even those huge bumble ones) are gathering nectar from the orange flowers. So very busy.
In the distance I hear the occasional crowing of roosters. Birds chirp, then scold, and mourning doves hoo-HOOOO-hoo.
The nearby hills are sprinkled atop with green, their lower faces dry and a bit grey now in the June weather. The sun is on its way to peek over the top and warm the cool air. All seems lazy and relaxed here--except for those buzzing bees still peppering the vine.
Later: After a second breakfast feast, we loaded up for Heraklion on the north-central coast. A brief stop at the “green lake” in the gorge of Agios Nikolaos just north of Zaros revealed steep hillsides and a variety of flora and fauna. I enjoyed the wafting smell of sycamores and the gnarly trunks of ancient olive trees. If only they could talk…
Next stop on our trek to the coast was a shop filled with natural products (dried herbs, tinctures) and fossils/finds from 6-8 million years ago. Crete has risen out of the sea, so many sea creatures, including clam, sea urchins, leaves, coral, are preserved in stone form. Fascinating.
Over the hill and down to Heraklion. The capital of Crete, Heraklion has three major universities and is Crete’s fourth largest city. We settled into our hotel, and after several attempts at getting the air conditioner to work (success--finally!), took a brief rest before walking down to the Archeological Museum of Heraklion around the corner. Feels strange to be back in the big city after our quaint hill town.
Some interesting things from the museum:
This Phaistos Disc is important to Cretan writing/script. It has 45 pictorial signs, arranged (in various combinations) into 61 groups and is separated by incised lines--which is presumed to represent words. To date, no one has figured out the contents of the inscriptions (the disc is two-sided), but most evidence points to it being a hymn or a text of a magical character--this is from the early 17 century BC.
I'd never heard of bull leaping, but apparently it was a sporting "event" where one person held the bull's horns, another was at the tail to catch the acrobat who vaulted over a charging bull's horns, onto its back, and then off the bull. Oh my... Men and women of all races took part in this.
The third item is the ring of Minos. This ring impacts one's understanding religious iconography. The image on the bezel summarizes the three levels of epiphany. The goddess is depicted hovering in the air in miniature form, seated on a stepped platform topped with horns of consecration and rowing and steering a boat with a seahorse-head prow. The goddess passes through three natural elements of air, land, and sea, and this passage symbolizes the unification of the mortal world and imposes the message of Minoan power over land and sea; 1250-1400 BC.
A dinner on the hotel's rooftop and tomorrow off the Santorini. Only one more stop remaining!