Day Six
Saturday, July 2nd
Today was probably one of the best days of my life (so far. I have so many cool days ahead of me. I hope)!
Early in the day we went to the “Palace” of Knossos. We went early to beat most of the crowd, and thank the lord we did that because it got crowded. Here we saw a lot of terrible painting and restoration that was done by Arthur Evans, who just royally screwed it up. Instead of leaving it to the imagination, he makes it look tacky. I learned about this site in my first ever classics course- Greek Culture- and I used to think it looked so cool, but it’s just weird in person. There are a lot of wooden columns and they were geniuses enough to have four stories of stairs by digging into the ground to support the bottom two. It was cool to walk around and see the different parts for the rulers who lived there, but I think I would like it better if it *felt* old, which it didn’t. However, it is so well-known it was still great to be there.
After Knossos, we went to our first winery of the trip. I felt pretty classy, going to a Greek winery and all, and Lyrarakis Wines is a wonderful place to have your first wine tasting. At this winery we learned that not all wineries do a green harvest (I wish I could tell you what that really means, but they made a big deal about it so I thought I would mention it). In Europe, only certain areas are allowed to put water on the veins of the grapes, and Crete is one of those areas, so that was pretty cool!
After our short lesson about making wine we started our wine tasting. I will say that I rarely feel like an idiot, but I felt like a classless idiot during this wine tasting. During a wine tasting you swirl your wine around (make sure you hold the wine by the stem!), smell it to find out what is in the wine or what it smells like, and then you taste it. I couldn’t smell anything in the wine. Jordan and I were sitting there like, “it smells like wine?” I thought an herbal wine smelled like watermelon. I was useless. I also refused to dump any wine, even if I didn’t like it, because in my mind you don’t waste alcohol. I might not be the classiest and I might not be made for wine tastings, but I had a good time and I acted like I knew what I was doing, which I think it what most people do anyways. I bought a couple bottles and was on my way!
After the winery we went to the BEAUTIFUL town of Kapetaniana. The drive up to this area was terrifying. In the back of the bus I think only me and the guys were awake, and I was low-key considering getting my Xanax out of my bag because I thought our bus was going to fall off the mountain, but I remembered I had alcohol in my system so I stayed strong instead. We didn’t die and made it up. We had a tasty little lunch overlooking a gorgeous village, a mountain, and the ocean, and some people teared up because it was so incredible. Highly recommend spending time there if possible. I would love to go back.
After lunch there was an optional “walk” down to the water. All of us chose to do it except for Avina and Jordan, who had pretty bad stomach aches (I think they are liars). It started off fine, but it then turned into a goats path. I don’t mind hikes, I actually really enjoy them, but I wasn’t wearing tennis shoes, so stepping on plants for stability was pretty much a no-go. Instead I constantly stepped on rocks and felt like I might tumble a few thousand feet to my death. I didn’t, though! There was a halfway point where a Land Rover could pick us up. I had lived the last half in fear and was one of the slower people because my hip hurt from constant balance on it and I’m scared of heights, so I decided to skip the walk down a road and instead spend an extra hour in the water. I felt like I was cheating because I really wasn’t out of breath at this point, but I didn’t care. At this point, AJ, Kathryn, and I got in with Jordan and Avina and went down to the water. The ride down in the vehicle while off-roading terrified me once again and I saw my life flash in front of my eyes a few times, but I made it safely and enjoyed the water! We had a beautiful secluded area to ourselves. I am happy I went down early, because everyone who arrived from the full “walk” was so worn out and sweaty from the last half and said it wasn’t worth it to do the last half and said I did the cool part, so I think I made a great decision. By the time everyone got to the water Jordan and I had started balancing rocks on my arm out of entertainment, so we were definitely in the better position. Anyways, we had a nice afternoon in the water with the group, and then went up to dinner.
For dinner we had some great food (thanks for buying it, Barnes! You rock!) that included some goats milk ice cream for dessert. I didn’t eat the snails because the shit they hadn’t shit out was still attached to them, but I enjoyed everything else. We had a long day, and many people napped on the ride home. I had an oddly deep conversation with Colin and Nick about partying, what we were like in high school, and the evils of the pharmaceutical industry. It was a good, long day.
