After three days of adventures on Crete, including two bewildering drives through the back alleys and weird one-way streets of historic Chania, we flew out of Greece today (Thursday), going from Chania to Athens to Munich, where we are spending the night at an airport hotel. Crete was unexpected, in many ways.

We were surprised by the snow-covered peaks that towered over the coast road as we wound from Heraklion to Chania, about a two-hour drive. We spent this morning at Golden Beach, which would have been beautiful, but for the trash that marred the area back from the ocean. The Cretan sea, though, was clear-blue and perfect for swimming. Will had a great time at the beach. 

The day before, we visited the ruins of the Palace of Knossos, the enormous and palatial headquarters of the Minoan civilization. It is also the place of myth where Athenian hero Theseus went to slay the man-eating minotaur that King Minos kept in a labyrinth beneath the palace. Will, who now proclaims that he wants to be an archaeologist and travel the world, especially Greece, when he grows up, looked long and hard for signs of the labyrinth. Will and Courtenay are both somewhat sad that our vacation has come to an end. In fact, Will sobbed yesterday, saying he wanted to live in Greece. We suspect he just wants to stay on vacation, where it’s all fun, all the time. We’re glad he’s turned into the most amazing travel kid. He even tolerated the museums, tugging on your arm the second you started to actually read a label, saying “Mommy, look at this!” So much for reading about the art… Dad is somewhat more eager to head for home, or Palo Alto, at least. But all of us have had a wonderful time, and return with many stories to tell, and images and memories to last a lifetime, remembering both ancient and modern Greece. (P.S. Rick says it’s great to be in the homeland… his ancestors lived a few hours away in south-central Germany.) Besides, we’ve run out of both clean clothes and woolite….

We survived the parade, no riots, no nothin’. It was actually quite cool, with row after row of uniformed school children marching in the annual Independence Day parade. We then explored the city, which is surrounded by centuries-old Venetian-built stone walls. The wind was howling on the waterfront, sending waves spraying over the fortress that guards the small harbor here — once one of the most important in the Mediterranean. The ancient Minoans (5,000 years ago) used this harbor, as did various and sundry occupiers up to the time of Independence for Crete, less than 100 years ago.  We had lunch in a taverna overlooking the water; we’re finally getting with the Greek program, lunching at 2 p.m. and spending several hours waiting, first for the food, then another hour or so for the check. The cafes lining nearly every street in Heraklion were packed with holiday-goers. One pedestrian street near our hotel that has fabulously chic cafes (very cool scene last night) were today crowded with teeny-boppers flirting with each other amid the roar of motorcycles.  The scene harshed Rick’s mellow.So we escaped back to our hotel. It’s now late afternoon, we’re gathering our energy for tomorrow — we’re off to face the Minotaur at the labyrinth at King Minos’ palace at Knossos (at least the story goes — we’re learning a lot about imaginative and wishful-thinking archeology) and then on to Chania, our final Greek destination.

 It’s late Monday night, the 24th, in Heraklion, Crete. We’ve had a wild couple days since we last posted. We left Ancient Olympia just as the first few hundred of what eventually would total more than 1,000 Greek policeman took over the ruins and the little town for the official torch lighting ceremony for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. The cops shut down the ruins, ordered everybody away and seemed highly uptight and nervous. We had a moment of dismay as one officer told us the museum and everything was shut down until 3 p.m. — meaning we wouldn’t have seen one of the most important museums in Greece. (Rick was intrepid and found out we just had to find another route to the museum — but thank Zeus we had toured the ruins the afternoon before, or we would have been out of luck.) As we left, we met busload after window-barred busload of police officers rolling into town. As it turned out, they were right to be tense:  The next day, during the official torch lighting, in front of the president of Greece, top officials from China and everybody who is anybody in the International Olympic Committee, Tibetan protesters disrupted the ceremony, including a woman covered with fake blood who threw herself in front of the first torch carrier. We can’t seem to stop getting tangled up in major news events. Please, this is supposed to be a vacation. Anyway, yesterday we drove to Delphi and Arachova, this tiny village on a cliff below Mount Parnassus, where they are still skiing this spring. All the traffic is funneled into a twisting one-lane street through the center of town, tour buses, giant construction equipment and all. And the sidewalks are virtually non-existent — imagine a leisurely apres-ski stroll leaping away from careening buses…. We drove through it twice looking for our hotel, and a place to park — also virtually non-existent. We lucked on to a parking place on the outskirts of the village, then dragged our luggage up and down cobblestone alleys and stairways, looking for our hotel. We asked for directions twice, and might still be looking for it at this very moment, if Courtenay had not deciphered the Greek lettering, written in calligraphy style, a name written on a little piece of wood on a nondescript door. It was our hotel! It was really cool inside, with odd-shaped small rooms, fireplaces and, in the basement, the first heated, open pool that we have had since our vacation started. Will was thrilled. Will and his father later went swimming, and shared the pool with a comely European woman, whom Will later advised his mother, was wearing a swimsuit that was “too small.” So it was. We went from Arachova to the ruins of Delphi, which were flat-out the coolest thing we’ve seen in Greece, just a spectacular place, a spot of sacred worship for millenia, carved out of towering mountains. This is the mythological center of the earth — the place where the two eagles that Zeus turned loose at each end of the earth met as they flew around the world. The Delphic Pythia (an oracular priestess) gave oracles for centuries, including to Oedipus Rex. We walked past the temple of the Apollo, and climbed to the top of the site, where there is a nearly intact stadium from thousands of years ago. It was a remarkable morning — sunny, beautiful, full of birds and wildflowers, with few people at the ruins as early as we were. The slide show above this post shows some of the things we saw. We left Delphi and its museum in the late morning, and drove back to Athens. We killed several hours in the airport, and then flew to Heraklion, Crete. We’re here the next two nights. Tomorrow is Independence Day in Greece, and there will be a parade here in Heraklion. We’re hoping for a quiet day, with no news, no strikes, no protests. Just this once.  Early morning note: Courtenay opened up the curtains to the room to see a row of policemen marching through the square — we’re hoping they are participants in the parade, and not that the flame will be run through town, or George  Bush has decided to vacation in Crete (like he did when we were in Kyoto.) Cheers! We’ll let you know…

We had trouble with our Internet yesterday, but somehow managed to get on this morning, so here’s a quick update. We drove through the amazing mountains of Arcadia yesterday, a place of myth and legend, a drive we’d been dreading. It turned out to be lovely and well-marked. We explored a 13th century castle perched above a hillside hugging village of Kretena; Will loved imagining he was being a Knight, shouting “clang, clang, clang” as he ran through the deserted ruins. (No tour buses here). Somewhat to our dismay, he was imagining torching the castle, not defending it. We lunched in a tiny, one-lane village, the only other customers a Greek family drinking ouzo and Coke. The few trucks that came through town nearly hit the shops on both side of the road; the view was amazing. After we left that town, Andritsena, we drove through miles and miles of burned olive groves and pine forests, the devastating results of last summer’s fires, which almost burned the ancient Olympic grounds. It was rather heartbreaking to see all that destruction, though the grass was growing and wildflowers everywhere. Most homes seem to have been saved in these isolated mountains. We got to the site of Ancient Olympia mid-afternoon and were able to walk through the ruins — amazing, the biggest we’ve seen. Will ran through the keystone arch onto the Olympic stadium grounds and ran up and down the famous stadium where athletes competed from as far back as 10th century B.C. until the 4th century A.D. The ruins were extensive, with all the administrative buildings and gymnasia and baths, not to mention the huge temples to Hera and Zeus. We saw where they will light the Olympic Flame for the 2008 Beijing Olympics — tomorrow! It’s Rick’s one great failure in travel planning, missing the flame by a day. We’d noticed the town teeming with Chinese, and Chinese TV journalists, and this is the reason. But we’ll watch it on TV with the rest of you. It’s stormy today; we’re going to visit the museum here this morning and then drive to Delphi. Then off to Crete tomorrow! We’ll try to post another slideshow when we have better Internet access, perhaps in Crete.