Thessaloniki to Crete

Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Irakleio, Kriti, Greece
Wednesday 9/28
 
  Mt. Olympus is out for a morning viewing. Hazy but beautiful in the morning sun. Since there were only 4 or 5 of the rooms occupied at the Cosmo we had extraordinary service. We say goodbye to our innkeeper and head to Thessaloniki, the 2nd largest city in Greece.
 
Driving in Thessaloniki is an exercise in high density driving. Parking spaces are impossible and the streets are jammed with cars. With sons named David in both of our families, we headed to Osios (Blessed) David's church, built in the 6th century, overlooking the city with some outstanding rare mosaics of a beardless Christ. Our GPS with a voice we now call "Zorbita", guided us to some old city streets that were steep and so narrow that we had to turn the mirrors in to avoid hitting parked cars and sides of the buildings. Zorbita does not distinguish between passable roads and named footpaths and we had a real adventure in driving the old city streets but finally located the church.  

Next we headed to the Byzantine Museum. Again parking was a nightmare and we ended up leaving the car with a parking service at a BP gasoline station and hoped we would see it again. The museum was worth the effort and we recovered the car.
 
Time to fly to Crete. Everyone went through security with flying colors except Mary. After disassembling her carry on bag they finally conceded the international security risk was not there. Landing in Iraklion, Crete we were immediately greeted with a sign of economic turmoil, a taxi strike. The city bus folks assured us the "blue" bus would pass by our hotel and drop us at their door. They dropped us close to a mile away at the Costello Hotel while we were staying at the Kastro Hotel (oh the adventures of communicating in Greece) We walked.  "Zorbita the GPS" guided the party of 4, tugging our luggage, to the hotel.  
 
The Kastro Hotel is in the old city (very narrow roads), decent but way not fancy but with an extraordinarily helpful desk manager who arranged for a rental car and directions for the following morning.
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