Today we woke up in our own time and traveled to Heraklion by bus, which took a few questions and ensuring we knew what bus was what. But for Heraklion, it was pretty easy, as it is the capital, though we figured it might be a little trickier finding the bus back from the capital to our smaller region of Hersonissos. When we got to the bus terminal, it took a few more questions to get the right bus to Knossos Palace, but all in all it was generally uneventful (or at least, not such that I took it down in my notebook or took photos).

Knossos Palace itself was both interesting and disappointing. It was interesting since quite a lot of it is still there, staircases, labyrinthine corridors, and ruins all about. But disapointing because a guy called Evans seemed to make it up as he went along while explaining and reconstructing it. Okay, I’m being unfair, but still… Anyway, it was pretty hot and we found a couple nice places with a breeze to rest between bakings.

Staircase to nowhere…

After we saw all there was to see there, we made our way back to Heraklion to poke around. We looked for a place to have lunch and were accosted by someone who really seemed to walk our business, but we declined and wondered a bit more, and ended up at the place next door, which was slightly embarassing. Also, it was here that I first encountered someone who didn’t seem to speak english, which is unfortunately since I think he was asking for change.

We made it back to our hotel successfully and went to the beach again for a swim, but further along where it wasn’t quite so rocky. I went in again, but we didn’t stay in long, because soon our feet were being attacked by little fish we didn’t encounter before. They didn’t seem to do damage, but it was a bit disconcerting to be standing there for a second and suddenly you feel something nip at your calves. Alicia screamed a couple of times, which I have to say really carries on the beach, and then left the water and was disinclined to return. Laura and I stayed out in the deeper zone where the fishies seemed to avoid. But I did get nipped on my own way back to shore. When we had gone to the beach today at all, we had paid the 5 euro deposit for towels, but on our way back, we were told off by the clerk there that we couldn’t just take towels like that… nooooo, if we took towels, they could only be returned on the day we check out. Oh well, we had already ’scored’ fresh towels once so far, take that hotel.

That evening I need to charge my camera. I had done so on the cruise ship, where they had both the Greece sockets and the one I’m more familiar with. But sadly, I figured on the ship they only had the one type of power, namely the European kind. This was sad because I had brought a power bar which I thought could already take that power since I had used it on the cruise ship. My charger itself can handle both power types, but not the shape of the plug. And with the experiment on the cruise ship and the power bar, I thought the power bar could too, stupidly.

Polarized grounded plugs be damned

So while Alicia was in the shower, I wanted to charge my camera. She had a fully-fledged power transformer, and Laura brought a plug (but not power) adapter. Since I didn’t want to wait, I opted to plug my power bar into Laura’s adapter, and then both of us could charge from the power bar. So I plug the adapter into the wall first, good, now I’ll plug in the power — snap… and the lights go out.

I hadn’t plugged the powerbar all the way in, so when I heard that noise, I recoiled and that unplugged the powerbar. I wondered in the dark back to the door so I could open it for some light. Meanwhile, Alicia was calling out “uh, guys?” since she was now showering in darkness. I opened the door and pulled the keycard (which cuts power). Luckily each room has it’s own fusebox, so I found the one we’d tripped and switched it back, put the keycard back in, and the lights came back on.

Neither Laura nor I wanted to try plugging in our chargers through her adapter (though I’m sure those would have worked, just not my stupid powerbar) so when Alicia was done, she broke out the transformer and for the rest of the trip we had to rotate our use of it (since each charge up used up the recommended duration of time to use the transformer in a single sitting). Stupid.

After dinner this night I believe is when we went to the bar and asked for Raki, which is a popular drink on Crete, and cheaper than Ouzo. It seemed to me very similar to Ouzo, except the stuff served to us was not diluted, as it was clear. Even the bartender tried to gently dissuade us from having it, but we wanted to try it. We each took a shotglass of it and swigged it back. It just burned, but of course my stomach and throat had been in turmoil anyway, so maybe the burn was exaggerated. We paid, and also tipped, and the bartender spontaneously offered us another for free (well, we assumed, those situations are always tricky, he seemed to insist that we try more and that the second one is better.) In the end only Laura and I accepted to have a second, and it burned just the same. I guess I should stick to water and Mythos.

To be continued