Crete - Gournia

 We left our olive grove house at about 9:30am with plenty of time to get to our destination, Rethymno. 

The clouds were funneling through the mountains looking like impending rain.

We have driven this road a few times now and I have always been curious about this particular church. Had to google it...

The beheading of John the Baptist, also known as the decollation of Saint John the Baptist or the beheading of the Forerunner, is a biblical event commemorated as a holy day by various Christian churches. According to the New Testament, Herod Antipas, ruler of Galilee under the Roman Empire, had imprisoned John the Baptist because he had publicly reproved Herod for divorcing his first wife and unlawfully taking his sister-in-law (his brother's wife) as his second wife Herodias. He then ordered him to be killed by beheading. from wikipedia.

4th time past this site too and this time I stopped. Good place for a break from driving and in no hurry.

We were the only people there, a lonely day for the woman collecting admission. She probably only took in the 4 Euro she charged us, all day, wouldn't even cover the cost of the little heater she had going in her office.

Unlike the archaeological sites we had visited in Cyprus, there were no huge temples and expansive villas with mosaics, it was a much earlier settlement.

This was a town of hundreds of small homes located on a hill between the mountains and the sea.

You could walk the narrow streets,

looking into the rooms and

sometimes read about what had been found in them.

We wandered independently and I found myself taking pictures of the wildflowers as much as the ruins.

I had only seen small yellow flowers growing in the olive orchards but here was the profusion of spring Anemones that I remember from Cyprus.

The top of the hill did have an open area that had been the administrative and religious centre, with the town spilling down both sides.

Some of the houses would have been 2 stories with the second story built of mud and stairs going up the outside.

Some of the sites I have been to have been so cleaned up, "worked on" and over run that it is difficult to get a sense of the place.

In contrast it was very easy here to imagine what it would have been like, teeming with people engaged in everyday life

and industry (there was evidence found here of extensive pottery and bronze work). We spent about an hour absorbing it and then drove on.

The Minoan civilization developed from the local Neolithic culture around c. 3100 BC, with complex urban settlements beginning around 2000 BC. After c. 1450 BC, they came under the cultural and perhaps political domination of the mainland Mycenaean Greeks, forming a hybrid culture which lasted until around 1100 BC. from Wikipedia.

Proof I was there, photo by Rick.

 

Past Agios Nikolaos and Heraklion to Rethymno. The GPS took us straight to our next accomodation but when we knocked on the door of 7 Reas Street there was someone else renting it. A moment of worry, phone call to the landlord and we found that the address had a number of apartments and we were directed to the correct one. Phew!

View from our balcony. We are here for the rest of our stay.