October 27, 2003

European Vacation Part 12: Knossos Ruins.

After a few days of scootering, beach exploring, leering at Cretan girls' ridiculous bums and being accosted by hookers posing as go-go dancers, we thought that it was high time that we injected some culture into the proceedings. Greece, after all is the birthplace of important stuff that we take for granted like democracy, the Olympics (special and regular) yogurt and of course, anal. Are you familiar with the Labyrinth (and we're not talking about the seminal Bowie cinematic classic) and the Minotaur of ancient Greek mythology? Well it turns out that where that shit went down thousands of years ago was just an hour away from our condo. We decided to get up bright and early and chizzeck it out.

grant, me — Fatty managed to snap a pic of the Grizza and I in a golden slumber before we got some breakfast and hit the road. (Luckily he wasn't there to capture the Golden Shower that had gone on a few minutes earlier).

chris a, fatty, grant, me — Aw, yeah. Let's hear it for culture.

Ever notice how the Greeks have been kind of quiet on the world scene since inventing modern thought and baklava? Well it turns out that they've been teaching killer fish circus tricks. Unfortunately, the bizarre aquatic piranha circus wasn't happening until after we left. Boo!

grant — Now this picture really does not do any justice to this girls sick ol' onion. The Grizza doesn't make that face for just any hot girls bee-hind. (Oh wait, yes he does.) Although, I regret to inform that points are taken away for wearing white pants after Labor Day.

It's a good thing that none of us picked up that young honey. As the sign to the ancient palace states: No sluts! No rocking out! (Boooooo!)

fatty — Yet another possible JDate photo opp for the Fatty. "Dude, it says to chicks 'I like culture and stuff' ". As handsome as he looks ladies, just keep in mind that moments after posing for this picture he ran off to "look for the torture chamber."

Behind the 5,000 year old palace there was once an inlet where dolphins frolicked. Here's a picture of them.

fatty, grant — What we really wanted to see was the labyrinth, a torture chamber or even an honest-to-goodness Minotaur. (half-man half bull)

At the beginning of the tour, we were told that the palace ruins that we were exploring were from 3,000 BCE. So the whole time, we're walking around looking at this stuff in awe. Like "Wow this things been standing here for 5,000 years!" Then about halfway through the tour, our guide informed us that everything we'd been looking at was actually all reconstructed from piles of rocks discovered at the excavation site at the beginning of the 20th century.

Me upon realizing that my grandparents are older than the buildings that you see in the background.

Okay, so get this. There is no labyrinth, there are no minotaurs and not only that, there never was a minotaur. The myth is really just like a really, really, really long game of telephone. Turns out there was a king, Minos who was strong and possessed a bullish personality. The palace had like tons of rooms. Before the roof was put on it kind of looked like a maze to bemused locals. That's your labyrinth.

And nope. No torture chamber either (Turns out the Minoans were an almost entirely peaceful civilization). We held out hope that there was at least a snack bar somewhere, but no such luck there either. There was however, a functional 5,000 year old plumbing system which our 80 year old tour guide told us she would demonstrate. For a second we were scared that she'd pop a squat right in front of us. But she just kind of pointed at it and told us how advanced the Minoans were. Obviously not advanced enough to leave some skulls or a torture chamber to cheer poor Fatty up.

This was the original throne of king Minos where he decreed that no trace of anything fun should be left in his kingdom.

chris a, me — It was right at this wall where we received our first bit of exciting news: That the tour's almost over

fatty, grant, me — We lament not checking with the dancing piranha people before scheduling our trip.

Now this is cool. It's the oldest road in Europe. We followed it away from the tour and towards lunch.

In addition to raki, the guy that we chatted up at this restaurant brought us free ice cream sundaes too! Booze and ice-cream before 1pm. And it's not even my birthday!

You can't really tell but the German chick sitting over my shoulder was really cute and Grant insisted on capturing her in a pic so he could "use it later" whatever that means. Here's me as the photo decoy.