Heraklion: My Minoan Discovery

We walked off the ship and straight onto the Venetian walls for sunrise — the Lion Fountain was already glowing and the city still quiet. Twenty minutes later we were at Knossos just as it opened and had the Throne Room almost to ourselves for fifteen perfect minutes. The red columns, dolphin fresco, and that tiny alabaster throne — seeing them in real life after decades of textbooks made me tear up. The site is partially reconstructed (some hate that, I loved it — helps you feel the scale).

Back in Heraklion we wandered the market — mountains of olives, honey in combs, mountain tea that smelled like the hills. We had lunch at Peskesi (farm-to-table Cretan) — lamb with stamnagathi greens and the best dakos I've ever had. In the afternoon, we visited the Archaeological Museum where the snake goddesses and Phaistos disc are even more astonishing in person.

The pros: you are walking through the Minoan world that basically invented modern life. The cons: Knossos gets very hot and crowded by 11 a.m.