We are in Heraklion, the largest city on the island of Crete. We arrived mid-day Sunday by fast ferry from Santorini. The fast ferries are a bit faster than the regular ferries but I prefer the conventional ones. The passenger compartment is one big room with no place to flee screaming kids and crying babies. The windows are invariably dirty and water splattered, and the outdoor space is limited and populated by smokers. It is like an airplane that never takes off.
A short walk from the port took us to our apartment, an attractive and well-equipped 2 bed, 1 bath with a big balcony and a partial sea view. It is a small footprint building centered by an open winding staircase and next to that a slow, coffin-sized elevator.
The apartment is well equipped and well decorated. The bathroom is tiny and features an over-sized sink (why do these exist?) and mysteriously-designed faucets. Just where is hot I ask every time I use it.
Monday we woke to a rain-drenched town but the sun soon came out and we walked to the well-reviewed and popular Archeology Museum. I think this will be my last archeology museum; I admire what archeologists can infer from a tiny carved pebble or a small shard of pottery, that they are able to extrapolate from something so small to something large, like a wall-filling mural. But I think all the archeology museums I've visited, be it Napoli or Heraklion or where ever, all these museums are an indistinguishable blur in my memory.
Just a few steps from the museum we found a wonderful patisserie/cafe where we loaded up on sweets and entres. From there we wandered a bit of the old town of Heraklion and soon found ourselves back at the apartment, with its large balcony featuring a couple of views of the harbour with its ferries, and with the sound of airplanes overhead. There are a lot of airplanes in the sky, many more than expected, as it turns out there is a flight about every ten minutes north to a big city, like Berlin, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Paris, London, etc. Crete is a popular vacation spot for northern Europeans.
