Iraklion (Crete), Greece

Beautiful day which we planned to visit the Knossos Palace and Archaeological Museum, which holds the bulk of discoveries from the palace excavations. The museum was a six minute walk from where the bus shuttle dropped us off in town. How hard can that be? Well, an hour later we stopped for lunch and a drink. Google maps sent us all over town, we both tried navigating and both ended up heading in the opposite direction. Talking to others on the cruise, we all had the same problem. Anyway, we finally got there, and it was worth the effort.

The museum has a more diverse and extensive collection than the

Acropolis. I think it was a much better collection and gave a much better picture of how people lived over 3,000 years ago. The everyday utensils were beautifully made and decorated, they had come from a palace after all. The size of the statues, urns and sarcophaguses is astounding.

We then took a taxi to Knossos Palace which has a massive footprint and some very good reconstructions to help visualise how large the palace was. It helped that we had seen a mockup at the museum and imagining all the statues and artifacts placed here, it must have been very grand indeed. It took about 30 minutes to get there for €14 and €18 coming back. After a day of walking over 10km in the heat we weren't taking a bus and €18 seemed pretty good value. And the driver knew where he was going and dropped us to the port gate bus shuttle.