Crete II: Gournia and Lato

Photos are taking excruciatingly long to upload, so I'm definately not going to get all of the Knossos and museum pictures up before this place closes. So I'll just give you a teaser: peacocks.

Anyway, we did four things on our second day in Crete. The two I don't have any photos of are lunch in the small town of Kritsa and a quick stop at Panaghia Kera. I think it was at Kritsa that I first realized the nature of the Greek economy. Essentially you get two or three different kinds of establishments (tavernas, gift shops and, in the big cities, gyro places) and they make up your area's economy. All members of a given group sell mostly the same things for roughly the same prices. They are also, invariably, crammed into the tightest possible space. It is a typical experience in small tourist towns to walk a few blocks down a street and see ten tavernas serving the same food and ten gift shops on the other side of the street selling the same stuff. Anyway, Panaghia Kera is a Greek Orthodox church (Panaghia being the all-holy Virgin) with well-preserved frescos, but the weird thing about it is that it was built by the Venetians during their occupation of Crete. So everyone in the frescos is wearing Italian Renaissance clothing and half the church is honoring St. Francis, who is not only not an Orthodox saint, but was also de facto excommunicated (at the time) by virtue of being Roman Catholic clergy.

And now I'm getting the boot. Tomorrow I'll try one of the places in Syntagma, which is a little bit of a hike, but still within walking distance and open 24/7. The photos are up at http://www.panoramio.com/user/1967629 for the impatient, and I'll say what exactly is in them tomorrow. Right now I'll just point out that Gournia is a Minoan town and Lato is actually a later Greek site, complete with a small temple, a small theather, and small public buildings that were all abandoned because 500 years is a long time to have to schlepp your fresh water up and down a mountain every day.

EDIT: Ok, I've got Pete's computer for a few hours so let's get to it. First Gournia:
A great action shot. Dr. Farney is lecturing frantically about a rock. Because this rock is sticking out of the middle of a paved courtyard, it seems to have some sort of useful purpose. Archaeologists have assumed that this rock, like everything else they can't find a useful purpose for, had some sort of religious significance. This is very unusual in that neither the Minaons nor the Mycenaeans nor the later Greeks worshipped rocks or gods who resembled rocks. Of course, that theory isn't necessarily as stupid and flimsy as it sounds. After all, Islam's holiest shrine also revolves around a rock sticking out of a big courtyard, and they don't worship rocks or deities that look like rocks, either.
A paved street. You can't get carts down these, but it's still a pretty good indicator of civilization.
Quite a view. Like most of Crete, Gournia has a good view of the Mediterranean and is pleasantly breezy. Especially so, actually, since Gournia is at the narrowest point of the island.
More substantial ruins would only have blocked the view.
The was some guy's house at least 600 years before the Iliad was written.
Ruins. We hadn't quite gotten bored of them yet.
A prettier shot of a Minoan street.

Lato was built way up in the mountains. This is a great idea if you're worried about the guys from Knossos beating you up and taking your stuff.
And judging by the walls, the people at Lato were.
Stairs up to some civic buildings. This is the easy way up to the settlement.
The hard way up apparently fell off the side of the mountain with some of the ruins somewhere in the past 2500 years.
Another landscape shot, this time featuring trees that don't grow olives.
The view from A bit farther back.
Our first good ol' fashioned Greek temple. That platform in the back once supported a cult statue of Apollo, probably made out of either bronze or marble. He and his mother, Leto, were both big at this site, so much so that it's actually named Leto, but with a local pronounciation. I should probably repeat that this site is a good thousand years younger than almost anything else we'd seen so far. After the vaguely-Greek Mycenaean civilization collapsed in the 1200s BC, the Greeks lack writing and big stone buildings until they get their act back together in the 700s. It was in that period, from about 700 to about 500 BC, that Lato was built.
Backing up a bit. That pile of rocks in the foreground used to be the alter. Sacrifices were always offered outside, and temples were actually optional structures built because the Greeks thought they looked really cool and assumed that the gods did, too.
That thing in the foreground is a press for making olive oil or wine.

We went to the beach at Nea Malia for the last stop. The beach was nice, but by Greek standard it wasn't that breathtaking and the coolest thing that can be said about it is that there were WWII-era bunkers nearby. Pete lost his glasses, Dr. Farney lost his sunglasses and Kat lost her bellybutton ring. Disgruntled, we went back to Herakleion and scrapped our plans to go back the next day.