January 27th

By: Nadeen Bunkers

Today we boarded the bus at 9 am and drove an hour to the Gortyna Archaeological Site. We have grown accustomed to meeting plenty of cats and dogs on our travels, but today we met a new species: a snail! After taking pictures of him/her, we ventured around the site. Gabriele, our tour guide, said that across the street in an olive grove were remains of temples, bath houses, and other things dating back to Roman times. Located at the bottom of the acropolis of Gortyna was a theater dated to first century AD. Although we could not sit in the theater as we have done with other theaters we have visited throughout this trip, it was still very cool to look at and learn about. The theater was remodeled so many times that historians have trouble deciphering which aspects were added from which era. Behind the theater a bit was the oldest preserved law inscription in Europe. Rather than being read right to left or left to right, it alternated such that you had to read it in a zig zag. We learned a bit of biology at this site as well. We saw a plane tree which doesn’t lose its leaves in the winter and can be over 1,000 years old! Though the one we saw was only a few hundred years old. They grow in the most fertile part of Crete, in the biggest plane in the entire island.

We then drove 20 minutes to Faistos (our last archaeological site!) where we saw the remains of a large Minoan palace. Contrary to other renovations we have seen at other sites, the renovations done to this prehistoric site were for preservation rather than to aid in the interpretation of the setting. Here we saw remains of houses from the Hellenistic era of 3rd and 2nd century BC, the oldest writing example in European history, and another non-cat/dog friend: a toad! There were many cats on the site we befriended as well, but we had to protect the toad from them. We then drove about 5 kilometers to the beach town of Matala, which was beautiful and a nice break and end to our day of touring.

When we got back to Heraklion, we all went our separate ways until meeting at 6:00 pm to board the overnight ferry. Some chose to explore the vessel, others did homework, and the remaining (including myself) chose to go to bed as early as possible to hopefully avoid sea sickness and/or get enough sleep before our 2 am flight home on Wednesday!