Greece Day 3

After a good night's sleep, thinking we might be done with jet lag, we planned our first full day in Crete with our friends Carol and Jo. We planned a trip to Crete wine country followed by a visit to the ruins of the Minoan palace at Knossos, Crete's best know and most visited historic site.

 We started by driving out to wine country, a little more inland in Crete due south of Heraklion. Crete has great wine weather, but the wine business has reall y gotten underway in the last decade our so.  The main crop in Crete, of course, is the olive.  Lots of figs too.  So we drove down into the tiny town of Peza, a little off the beaten bath and not particularly touristy. We ate at a teeny restaurant in Peza, very local. The proprietor, whose English was almost as limited as our Greek, asked us if we wanted omelettes or salad.  Apparently the only choices.  We selected omelettes, not really sure what would be in the omelettes. But they were good, with some feta cheese and some meat, and for some reason, each omelette had two French fries sitting on top. But it was good to get some food in our stomachs before tasting wine all afternoon. 

There was a wine tasting room right in downtown Peza, so we stopped in there for some tasting. Wine was perfectly okay, but nothing too exciting. However, the nice German lady behind the counter gave us a map of wine country to help,us find our way around. Unfortunately, the map only seemed to serve to help us get lost, and we then took a very pleasant, if not productive, 90 minute drive through Crete's lovely wine country. And while it was beautiful and enjoyable, we really wanted to get to some actual wine tasting.  So we backtracked, and finally got to our second winery, a co-op of wine and olive oil growers. Again, fairly underwhelming experience, not helped by the poorly flushing toilet. The less said about that the better. But again, the lady serving us was most helpful, and we did buy olive oil, so with her help we headed on to another winery. Driving through the next little town, we did witness a fight between locals sort of in the middle of the road, actually sort of needed to drive around them. But ultimately, we made it to Lyrarakis, an absolutely lovely winery. Would fit right into Napa or Sonoma. Tasted wine made from traditional Crete grapes, and some from better know grapes, like Syrah. Also tasted something called verjuice.  (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verjuice). Bought several bottles of that for chef friends at home plus several bottles of wine to drink here in Crete.

After we were done wine tasting we headed to Knossos. I'm won't say too much about it, you can look it up.  However, it is amazing to see something so ancient and so large. It's in a fabulous setting and I can only imagine how spectacular it must have been in its day. There's lots of controversy about an early 20th century renovation by an Englishman named Arthur Evans, and I can understand the issues with that. Sometimes it's hard to know what would have been Minoan versus what was Evans' take on it. But amazing nonetheless. 

At the end of the day, we drove to a bar on the beach near our villa before heading back for the evening. Friendly place in a lovely location.  Nice way to end a good day!