It's a bunch of Crete

First the Palace of Knossos. This ancient site is hotly debated due to the work of Arthur Evans who "restored" the site in a manner that he thought represented archaeological evidence. Some call the restoration work a Disney-ification of the site.

It really shows in the coloration of the columns and some of the frescoes. There's been debate whether or not to undo the restoration but somehow this has become some of the allure of Knossos. In any case, it still is quite an impressive site and unlike Delos you can actually see what this could have looked like in its full grandeur. 

It is an oddly disjointed site in terms of restoration. There's completely restored areas like the room you see above and the one below and then there's just stretches of foundation rock. 

Looking back at these pictures I'm realizing how much I dislike the restoration. It just cheapens everything and yes, it allows you to see what it could have looked like you are viewing this through an interpretation of an "archaeologist". 

This abomination stands in the middle of the site. The Minoans were big on bulls. Those bulls look like they're wresting. 

That's a guy on the left. I know we're in Europe and all but come on. No man should ever ever wear shorts that are the same length as their girlfriend. 

I've just realized that I'm writing about stuff from about 4 months ago. I need to get this blog updated to more current times. We're time warping to now for the next blog post. This baby is gonna hit 88 mph. 

A trip to the Classics

Besides being a party town, Mykonos is a gateway to one of the more impressive Greek ruins, Delos. The mythical birthplace of Apollo and Artemis, Delos, is a UNESCO World Heritage site and a 30 minute ferry ride from Mykonos. 

I hate to comment on something so obvious but ruins are very ruinous. In essence, Delos is a bunch of rocks that were formerly an amazing cultural and religious site. It's still very hard to imagine what it used to look like but you still see the vestiges of its former glory. 

Our lack of understanding as to what anything represented was due to our cheapness and want of free reign of the place. Guides were posted at the entrance of Delos for us to utilize but we decided to just wing it and try to figure things out with the help of our trusty guidebook. The lack of commentary you will receive throughout this blog post shows you how much information we gathered on this trip. 

What was amazing was the size of Delos. It's approximately 10 square miles and almost the entire island is at your disposal. 

The city was planned out in a very grid-like pattern with commerce and residential areas segregated in a very Simcity like way. 

Remnants of the arts could be found everywhere. It's amazing that the Greeks and the Romans were such voracious traders and travelers. 2500 years ago they were travelling to the far reaches of Asia and Africa. I can barely make it to Brooklyn without having issues. 

I won't give you the close-up shots of these statutes. They are exactly what you think they are. Shafty. 

I wish I could've gotten a better pic of the mosaic tile. I bet even back then some wife was telling her husband how she quite doesn't like the color of the tile. 

For most of the day we were under some cloud cover. Man when that sun came out was it beautiful and hot. Greek hot is really hot. 

Stop trying to rub your laptop screen. That thing on the top is a bird. I'm hoping you read this portion first before spending two minutes thinking your laptop screen was defective or dirty. Stupid bird. 

This was part of the gymnasium. Probably the changing room. I can imagine the Greek men talking about how bad their sports team, the Delos Dogs was doing and how they weren't going to make the playoffs. Ralpholo over in the corner complaining about his diety taxes. 

Amphitheater. Now playing Cat on the Hot Tin Corinthian Roof.

And we're drifting. We're now onto Heraklion. Our time in Mykonos ended with a day at the beach and I'm pretty sure you don't want to see my pasty body so we've moved onto Heraklion, Crete where I guess drifting is popular enough to merit this ad. Our trip to Crete was to broken up into two parts. The first was a day in Heraklion where we would visit the Palace of Knossos and then a road trip to Chania, the old Venetian port. Crete is a big ass island. It's the biggest island of the Greece so I felt the time we had was too short given the amount of land we could've covered. And this blog post is too short to cover what I wanted to say. Stay tuned.