I had doubted that I should have much to write tonight, as this was the day when HL and I traveled from Athens to Crete.
It transpires that the hours not spent in transit were sufficient for me to form some initial impressions of Greece’s largest island.

        The flight time from Athens to Heraklion was only 35 minutes.  Technically, it was a domestic flight yet it felt as though we were landing in another nation.  It felt odd not to be subjected to passport control and Customs as we exited the airport.  Heraklion is the regional capital of Crete, but once it was the major port of a Mediterranean empire. The island has been inhabited for millennia, and its Minoan civilization predates that of mainland Greece.  I shall have much more of that history to relate after I tour some of Crete’s archeological attractions.

       We had arranged to meet friends and stay at the same hotel in central Heraklion. Towards evening, we walked
for a while and found a suitable place to eat dinner.  After the meal, we resumed our stroll beside the harbor as the streetlights glowed in the humid air of night.

Nikos Kazantzakis, the renowned modern Greek writer, was born in Heraklion.

Food portions in Crete tend to be generous.  The Minoan Salad that I ordered could have sufficed for a family.

The Morosini Fountain, also called the Lions’ Fountain, is in the center of Heraklion.
During the period when Venice ruled Crete, the city suffered water shortages.  Morosini was the 17th Century Venetian official who had an aqueduct constructed to bring water from the mountains to the city, where it issues from the mouths of a quartet of lions to this day.

The Venetian Loggia served as Heraklion’s city hall. It, too, was commissioned by Morosini, in 1628.