Wednesday, 16 June 2021: Crete--Spinalonga Island, Miletas Cave, Minoan Ruins

 Last night's sleep on the boat was great! No changing tracks noises and bumps like a train berth  and no wild swinging like the hairpins turns the bus did in the mountains of Peru. Just a gentle vibration. I was up early enough to enjoy the sunrise.

I disembarked at 6:30 AM and after  renting a car,

 I drive east to Plaka and took a boat to Spinalonga Island. Spinalonga has a Venetian fortress completed in 1579, so strong that the island remained under Venetian occupation for several years after the Ottoman Empire conquered the rest of Crete,  After the Turks were evicted in 1904, all the lepers in Greece were sent there. That lasted  until 1957 after a cure had been found. Most of them were released.  The book _The Island _ by Victoria Heslop is based on the leper colony. Interestingly, Spinalonga Island was the most crowded tourist attraction of all the places I went.

Map of Venetian Harbor in Spinalonga

Next stop was Milatos Cave.  Many people had hidden there during the Ottoman invasion. The Turks had promised to allow them to leave , but forgot their promise when they were starved out.  It has a chapel in the middle in memory of this. There were no lights in the cave and parts of it had very low ceiling. There were very few visitors, but enough to feel comfortable there.

After that I went to two minoan palaces,  Malia and Knossos. They were mostly just the bare remains, but they would have been similar to  Topkapi or Forbidden City,  a huge sprawling place.  Someone attempted to recreate some of the buildings a hundred or so years ago at Knossos.  It did make it more interesting,  but the excavator appeared to exercise a great deal of imagination. 

I also drove to a place called fairy caves but decided against a hike since I was the only person there.

After that I returned my car and took a bus to Chania, about  3 hours west. My hotel, Alena Apartments, is a 1 minute walk north of the bus station.  Great location, not the most elegant, but extremely functional with a kitchen, a clothes drying rack over the balcony and a massage chair. I would stay there again. 

119 miles car, 74 miles bus, 1.7 miles ferry (to Spinalonga--not sure why Google didn't include the ferry from the mainland or all the walking I did.