Evacuated! (from a restaurant)

We got a late start yesterday on heading to Iraklion and Knossos. The weather was rainy off and on, and quite windy. It's not far in kilometers, but it took 2 hours to get to Iraklion; the National Road is not like an Interstate at home. We thought we'd eat in Iraklion and then go to Knossos, but after 45 minutes of futilely driving around, we gave up. Iraklion has no street signs in the Latin alphabet and we could not decipher enough names to get where we wanted to go. So, I literally jumped out of the car as we were stopped in traffic and ran to a bakery for cheese pies while Charlotte parked.

Knossos was HUGE. It was truly amazing to envision what it once was. It was sad, to me, that the original archeologist, Evans, had reconstructed parts. Oh well.

We drove back, and as the weather had gotten a little worse, it took a bit longer. We decided to go straight to Hania and walk around before dinner. There are a lot of nice little stores here, and we peeked in to them as we walked around the Old Town.

For dinner, we went to Semiramis, which I had scoped out the previous night. We sat under an outside tent in a cute courtyard, but it was raining so hard - thunderstorms,

actually - that the rain was coming in, more and more. All of the diners laughed it off, until we were all getting pretty damp and the restaurant led us, under umbrellas, to their indoor seating in a little cave-looking room. They brought our food, covered and on trays, and a refreshed carafe of wine. Everyone in the little cave was giggling about the experience; it was quite a bonding moment! The food there was delicious - so delicious I forgot to take any pictures! We had leek pie, cheese croquettes that were AMAZING, Cretan salad, and meatballs. And of course raki with a little sweets for dessert.

Afterwards, we found a cute jazz club and had one last glass of wine before heading to bed. If today is supposed to be as sunny as it is now, we'll head to a beach on the south coast.