Knossos - Archaelogical Rembrandt

I know Jess felt cheated when she went into the Rembrandt room and there was only one - but Knossos as it turns out, may be complete and total bullshit.

Apparently, Sir Arthur Evans, a wealthy Brit bought the entire area and began excavations. He was no archaelogist - no educational background, no history degree, no scientific base. Just some rich dude who figured he could dig this shit up and make his own interpretations. Now, if I really jog my memory, I am sure I knew this but I didn't remember and felt totally fucking cheated. The palace is REAL and the things you see are as they were (for the most part) but Evans did take some artistic license when reconstructing portions of the palace. As a historian, I don't know what the fuck he was thinking. That's as blatantly technical as I can be. By doing this, he totally calls everything at the site into question. He doesn't know if this was a house, a sotrehouse, a temple, etc. He made uneducated guesses at what all this stuff was. In addition, since he had no clue what he was doing, who knows how much shit was lost when he and these other fools were digging through all the rock. What a dick!

Anyway, it's supposedly a Minoan palace. Some of which can be dated back to 7000 BC. The mythology surrounding the place is that this is where King Minos had Daedalus create the maze where he kept the Minotaur. As the story goes, no one knew its secrets except the Kings daughter and she used it to get Thesues out. Then the King got pissed and imprisoned Daedalus and Icarus but Daedalus made wings out of wax, Icarus flew too close to the sun and then his wings melted and he hit the ground. Blah blah blah...I'm still pissed that this guy made shit up about what was what and the whole day was f'ed because I was questioning everything. Friggin' spoiled Brit.















That being said, being in a place where there are structures from 7000 BC is pretty cool. I just have to wonder how much stuff was lost or destroyed and how much did we loose in understanding ancient civilizations because this guy wanted to play explorer.


We spent the night in Iraklion. The hotel was a little old in decor but there was nothing to complain about. It was quiet and clean and most importantly, we paid the extra 5 euro and had AC. The bathroom had one of those old toilets, with the box and the pull string. I was just praying that Clemenza was able to get the gun taped to the back of it so I could come out and wack Sollozo and McClusky. The town itself, of what we saw of it down by the water was cool. It had a lot of old stuff that belonged to the Venetians who contolled the city for a long time. You can see St. Marks Lion, the sign of Venice on parts of the old fort. Other than that, we did our usual, walked around and checked out the scene - had some dinner and hung out. We pretty nuch relaxed because we had to get up and get on the ferry to Mykonos in the am. After coming back to the hotel we went out for another quick walk because there was a church that was lit up and looked really cool and I wanted to go back and snap a few shots of it. Afterwards, we just went back and hit the sack.







PS - Just a quick story - so sometimes when we get back to the room in the afternoon, I will sit on the bed and chill while we decide what we're gonna do. Inevitably, if Jess doesn't get a call or make one, she will ask me if I am gonna nap and then start doing some Sudoku. My answer is usually, I dunno, I'm just laying down and relaxing. Of course, I know I am going to nap and I usually fight it. After like the first couple of times I stop myself from naping, she will make a, "Uh not sleeping, huh?" comment. I growl - and go to sleep. She thought she would be funny and take a picture of me not sleeping. Little did she know, that I had one of her with her mouth open on the bus to Iraklion.