A Day In Agios Nikolaos.

According to the Met Office we were going to have a wet night followed by a dry day before Storm Amy made itself felt. But somehow the light morning rain just got heavier and heavier and by the afternoon the storm was well under way. Right now it has stopped raining so I was able to go and pick some tomatoes but huge waves are rolling in and breaking against the sea wall.

I went off to ride this morning. I had Cadno for which I was thankful as he is such a gentleman to ride. However that may have been for the last time as Cadno has been sold. He's 18 and after 10 years of being a much loved riding school horse he will now have a single owner and a quieter life. But he will still be kept at the stables. I already knew that Hazel is up for sale (£6,000). She has done well in competitions and jumps nicely but is not really a riding school horse as her spooking could unsettle indeed unseat novice riders. A new horse is arriving soon, a chunky 15.1 7yro cob. I can't wait to see what she is like.

Today's lesson was back to leg yielding and establishing bend. A nice steady lesson just right for getting back to riding. Especially as my cold is getting worse. Apparently half of Aber has a cold and/or a sore throat. only to be expected with the uni students arriving and the start of the children's school year. Once I got home from shopping, unpacked and hoovered our bedroom I wrapped myself up in front to the tv with a big mug of tea. 

No rain in Crete, at least while we were there.

We travelled by bus (only £2 ) to the nearby city of  Agios Nikolaos where first we visited the weekly market. While bigger than the market in Elounda it wasn't anything like the size of London markets. (I've been comparing prices today and while the produce was fresh and much tastier it was still about 50% more expensive than in the supermarkets here.)

After we'd looked around the market I found the way down to Lake Voulismeni. Legend has it that the lake is bottomless and connected to either the underworld or the volcano at Santorini. It is in fact over 200ft deep and was probably formed when an underground cave's roof collapsed.

 

Peter had decided not to use his phone in Crete as the only roaming deal he could get worked out to be very expensive so we relied on my memory of the map I'd seen on the laptop. I don't mind following my nose and hoping for the best but Pete wasn't too happy about wandering through random quiet streets especially when the stepped lanes went over steep hills. I should have taken a photo of the map to look at while we were walking which is what I did when we found a map by the lake.

That helped us find our way to the archaeological museum which is considered to be one of the most significant in Crete.

From the entrance to the museum we had a good view of the higgledy piggledy buildings climbing the city hills.

The modern museum was well laid out with the exhibits dating back to Neolithic times.

These early Minoan wine jugs are around 4,400 years old.

I had Pete stand by these bigger wine storage vessels to show their immense size. One of them had been repaired and then used to store grain.

A pot from the palace of Knossos. Hopefully we will visit Knossos and Heraklion museum on our next visit in the spring when it isn't so hot.

One of the early rooms had a glass floor over a 'sea bed' as the objects on display had all been recovered from the sea.

There were a number of cases of small clay animals, human figures and body parts which would have been offerings at the many temples on Crete. I liked the fact that some were made in moulds, showing a thriving local industry supplying offerings for visitors to the temples to purchase.

There were later rooms of what looked like ceramic blanket boxes but were in fact coffins. You were folded up into them and one had two skeletons in. Yuck.

We had a very interesting visit to the museum though I wish they had seats for visitors to sit of amongst the exhibits. (There was a row of seats on the way out by the very clean toilets, three types of hand soap to choose from.) There were chairs for the museum attendants which I saw one lady sitting on but some low benches would have been good.