The time difference and time of the year that we cruised with Princess meant that waking up at a sensible time for our bodies was more-or-less at around dawn. This was too early to see Crete yet but we got to watch some of the early moments of sunrise on the Mediterranean from our balcony.

We had time after breakfast to go for a walk around the top deck of the cruise ship under the early morning sun; many of the photos can be seen in the review of the Royal Princess.

A couple of hours later we approached the port at Heraklion on Crete which would form the base for our planned excursion to Knossos later in the day. Aircraft taking off and landing at the nearby airport on the island flew over the ship practically every five minutes making for quite a noisy arrival.

Knossos was very popular. On our arrival at Heraklion we’d seen a fair number of other cruise ships in the port and it was a fair bet that each of them had sent some passengers to the ancient site with numerous others probably on holiday on the island doing their part too. Walking around the excavation was a slow affair as we frequently waited for other groups to go ahead or move on from where our guide wanted to take us and point something out. We were using radios so that we could hear what he said and this allowed some of us to wander away from time to time to take photos away from the crowds.

Knossos was something we were looking forward to on account of its age and historical importance and there were bits of it we liked – its general layout, for instance, and the scale of the location were pretty impressive – but overall we ended up coming away from this excursion a bit disappointed. It took a while for us to really work out what we didn’t like about the place and it wasn’t that it was rammed with people or extremely hot with very few locations to get out of the direct sunlight (although both of those points are true that’s nothing that is really the fault of Knossos); it was the restoration work. There’s probably a good argument that parts of Knossos look very much how they would have thousands of years ago but the jarringly straight lines of wooden blocks or stone plinths in places against the older stones from the site seemed to be a very unsympathetic approach to presenting the area to tourists. We came away from Knossos thinking that parts of it looked like a childish Disney recreation rather than an adult archaeological site and it was the latter we’d hoped to see.

While Knossos was not as good as we’d hoped the excursion was generally handled well. As I’ve mentioned, the heat and exposure was an issue and we went through the water we’d brought along very quickly indeed and needed to top up on our sun block a couple of times. At one point we queued to venture into a structure to see a throne. This took about twenty minutes under blazing sunshine as every other group was trying to do the same thing. The resulting ten seconds to look at the object before being forced out by the crowd made for another disappointing part (and no photo from me) but it was busy; these things happen.

Knossos is definitely worth one visit, but I’m not sure about two. I would recommend it if you’re on the island because no matter what else it’s still a major historical location but it’s possibly the least favourite site of its stature we’ve ever been to. If the day is warm and cloudless then bring lots of water and sun block and if you can time your visit away from tour groups then do so.

Our walking tour took us in as far as Lions Square where the early-17th century Morosini Fountain was located. There were a few street entertainers here (of the “human statue” type) who would hilariously trap people or take items off them until our tour guide told them in Greek what I suspected to be “Fuck off and leave my group alone!” Generally, though, I’d have to say that all the Greek people we met on our Mediterranean cruise were some of the friendliest locals we’ve encountered on our travels. One of our guides explained at one point that they realised that for as poor a country as Greece is tourism is absolutely vital so good humour and manners were equally required assets.

During our free time period my wife and I broke with our tradition of immediately going off for a wander and headed for a café instead to get some beers and something to eat; the heat of Knossos had really taken it out of us. It wasn’t too long, though, before we did stroll around some of the streets off the centre of Heraklion in search of anything architecturally appealing. We didn’t have a huge amount of time, though, and we’d decided earlier that we’d head back on the coach, again, because it had been so hot.

The last point of interest as we made our way back to where the various coaches were parked was the Venetian era Bembo Fountain, built in the mid-16th century and the first time the citizens of Heraklion would have seen running water in the city.

Hey! Remember me saying that the tour guide wanted people to tell him if they were making their own way back to the ship so the coach wasn’t waiting beyond its due time? Well, funny story… We ended up waiting around for twenty minutes after we were due to meet. Ten of those were for a couple who couldn’t tell the time. And the other ten were for another couple who decided to head back to the ship on their own and didn’t tell anyone because it’s their holiday and they’ll do what they like and who cares about other people, right? Nice, eh?

Back on board the cruise ship and after some much needed showering and rehydrating we saw a very pleasing dusk sky beyond the hills surrounding the port of Heraklion.