Crete

I was only in Crete for two days, which seems very brief considering the 13-hour ferry ride to get there and the 5-hour ride to get away, but I wanted to see the remains of the Minoan civilisation. The Heraklion archaeological museum contains a Minoan collection second only to the national museum in Athens. It also, as I discovered, has been closed for five years for renovation. Lonely Planet needs to release an updated guide.

It does at least have a small but rich temporary exhibit open for €4 so I settled for what there was, which was very good. The following day was spent at the semi-reconstructed ancient Minoan palace complex of Knossos. It's just outside Heraklion and is justifiably its biggest tourist draw.

Ablutions

In Greece, the hotels insist you don’t throw your toilet paper in the toilet.  On the islands so far, anyway.  They provide a waste paper basket.  Though I’ve had experience with septic tanks before – the reason for this practice, I assume – I’m still vaguely repulsed at the idea.  The camp toilet on the Turkish relief ride was two foot-boards spanning a hole in the ground, and I somehow found that more coherent.  When out of habit I mistakenly dropped a few squares of paper into my Cretan toilet I had nightmare visions of a sudden septic uprising in the middle of the night.

I’ve had a varied experience with bathing on this trip.  I’ve had cold showers in the back of a caravan, swum in hot springs and splashed in cold springs, dipped in dams, squatted under hoses, squeezed into tiled cupboards masquerading as plumbing fixtures, and melted under one particularly memorable, long, hot hotel shower after two weeks in the saddle.  About the only way I haven’t got wet on this trip is being soaked by rain.  I think one un-sunny day it sprinkled.

The shower in my room in Crete was so small there was no room for even a shower curtain (which is probably so people don’t pull it aside and say: “hey, somebody bricked up this window”).  I got in it and threw my hands up in the air when I was mugged by the faucet, and when I turned around I was startled to run into myself.  The other side of the room got wet when I turned the water on, so I turned the nozzle to the wall and showered under the splashback.

Most hotel rooms provide shower gel and shampoo.  Some of these wondrous bathing treacles are both.  Other shampoo packets say “with conditioner.”  The one in my Crete hotel room said: “with compliments.”  Nonsense.  I showered and shampooed and walked straight out the front door and all they said was “have a nice day.”

When I get back to Istanbul in early August, one of the last things I’m going to do in Europe is visit a Turkish hamam, for which the Ottomans were famous.  There you don’t have merely an entire room to bathe in, you have three, each a different temperature.  After sweating into a rubbery relaxation, you’re finished off by a pounding into submission they call a massage.

The ferry from Rhodes to Crete

The ferry leaves from Akantia harbour, one of three in Rhodes Town.  It is 33°C and cloudless, and semi-industrial Akantia is hot, dusty, and shadeless with trucks and freight trailers splitting the backpackers and ferry passengers on the oily road who arrive on foot.  They’ve probably been told, as I have, to arrive an hour before the ferry departs, but it isn’t here and we all crowd into the little shade from the overhead sun that the ticket booths provide.

It finally arrives and everyone clambers aboard.  This is going to be a thirteen-hour trip arriving at 4.30am, so I scout as peaceful a spot as I can for a few hours kip later on.  Seated at the table next to me, however, is an unshaven thirty-something-old Greek bloke (Greek men all must shave with the handle end of blunt butter knives).  He is talking non-stop at the top of his voice to two wordless women across the table as if they’re on a mobile phone half a continent away.  His monologue is relentless.  Food doesn’t stop him; he talks right through it.  His voice is so obtrusive that others at tables around us stare at him.  He appears to enjoy the undivided attention he must think he commands, not realising that to disregard him is like trying to ignore a jet engine while standing on the runway.  I move across the lounge next to a family with a baby for some peace.