140_4018.JPG Mariele and I are having breakfast outdoors in the morning in March.  We are on the balcony of our apartment in the city of Heraklion on the island of Crete in the country of Greece in the European Union.  It was warm enough to have breakfast outdoors on most days, and there weren't enough bugs for people to bother with screen doors!

141_4129.JPG My Dad was working in this lab in Heraklion and this is the view out of his office window.  The trees up close to us are olive trees.  The bare field to the left is where they grow grapes to make wine.  If you look closely by the mountains to the right, you can see the sea.  That's about the place we first got our feet in the water. 

IMG_3700.JPG This was the second one. The way you flush this one is to push down on the metal stick. 

140_4017.JPG This toilet was found in the restaurant just down the street from our apartment.  You push the little button in the center to make it flush. 

140_4019.JPG We went to see some old ruins at Archanes with our hosts, Costas, Caroline, Anna, and Max.  Anna is on the left.  She is 15.  Caroline is her Mom, Costas is her Dad, and he is walking away.  Max is 11 but he is not in the picture.  These ruins are more than 5,000 years old.  You can see the bottoms of the walls of little houses. 

140_4021.JPG This is an ancient tomb in Archanes.  We went inside of it.  It was very dark and the floor was very mooshy. 

140_4022.JPG There was a dark side chamber in the tomb.  We couldn't see into it, so my Dad took a picture of the inside with his flash so we could see inside.  Then I went inside of it. 

140_4023.JPG This is the view from Archanes. 

140_4025.JPG These are some of the graves of the common people.  They are not big.  Afterwards, we went to a museum and saw what was inside these graves.  Bones of people we scrunched up in the same position a baby is in before birth (the "fetal position").  This is the only way they would fit in those small graves. 

140_4031.JPG We are standing in front of a new soccer stadium that will be used for the Olympics this summer.  The water was cold so we couldn't go swimming just yet. 

140_4030.AVI (Big movie file).  This is a movie of us playing run-away-from-the-waves at the beach. 

140_4055.JPG We drove up to the Lassithi Plateau, which is a flat place surrounded by mountains.  There is a lot of very old-fashioned farming going on here.  The thing to the right of the yellow truck is an ostrich! 

140_4071.JPG After we drove down from the plateau we had lunch in the town of Agios Nikolaos, which means "Saint Nicholas" in Greek.  It was a pretty town.  We walked around, played in a playground, and had pagato (that's Greek for "ice cream") . 

140_4072.JPG This flusher is very hard to see. It is just a little black button that is at the bottom of the tank. You push it to flush.

140_4073.JPG I am pointing to a school of fish because I miss school so much!

140_4075.JPG Here's another picture of us walking around in Agios Nikolaos. 

140_4077.JPG It was so windy on this side of the town that we had to leave very quickly. 

140_4078.AVI (Big movie file.) Here we are on a merry-go-round in Agios Nikolaos. 

140_4079.JPG Notice the adjustable see-saws.  You pick up the see-saw in the middle and move it to one of the side notches when one person is heavier than the other.  You shift it so the heavier person sits on the shorter side and the lighter person sits on the longer side, and then they balance better. 

140_4080.JPG This is the boat yard in Agios Nikolaos. 

140_4082.AVI (Big movie file) When we were trying to go home, we took a "short cut" through some small roads and little towns in the hills.  But there were a lot of things that slowed us down.  Like this flock of sheep. 

IMG_3714.JPG The climate is hot and dry most of the time so they can grow huge cactuses that would never survive in Massachusetts. 

IMG_3717.JPG We visited some ruins in Phaestos.  This is a wine maker.  You put grapes in the big round part, stomp on them, and the juice flows out into the little part. 

140_4085.JPG I am pointing to some old broken pots. 

140_4087.JPG You are looking at me through a hole in some stones. 

IMG_3729.JPG This is George.  He is three.  He and his parents, Dimitris and Maria, took us here. 

140_4090.JPG This is the view looking down from the palace at Phaestos over the valley below.  The trees in rows are olive trees. 

140_4096.JPG There is a local tradition that if you pick the pods off these plants and throw them at someone, the number that stick is the number of children you're going to have. 

140_4097.JPG Yikes!

140_4098.JPG Next we drove down to a beach at Kalamaki on the south side of the island.  On the way we saw this mountain island with a cloud over it that looked like a hat. 

140_4100.JPG This toilet flusher is in the restaurant where we ate lunch by the beach at Kalamaki.  You push down on the silver button on the side closest to you to make it flush. 

141_4103.JPG Here is George with his parents, Dimitris and Maria.  My Dad worked with Dimitris in his lab. George is going to have a baby sister soon!  

141_4105.JPG We made sand cities on the beach in Kalamaki.  This is Kylene's.  This beach had the best sand for building stuff of anywhere we found in Crete. 

141_4104.AVI (Medium sized movie file).  Here I am running along the beach.  It felt sooooo goooood to run barefoot in the surf here! 

141_4107.JPG We went to Knossos, which is the most famous ancient palace in Crete.  This palace was built about 4000 years ago.  This period of time is called the Minoan period, because the king of Knossos was almost always named Minos.  There are a lot of Greek stories involving King Minos of Crete. 

141_4111.JPG This is another part of the palace. 

141_4114.JPG This is probably the oldest toilet in the world.  It's part of the palace at Knossos.  It didn't have a flusher!  It just had running water flowing through all the time. 

141_4118.JPG This is a very interesting rock.  It contained different crystals.  Some kinds wash away more easily than others in the rain, so after thousands of years of rain on them, only the ones that don't wash away are left. 

141_4119.JPG This is a terra cotta pipe.  It was built 4000 years ago to bring running water from the mountains into the palace.  It is amazing that they had plumbing that long ago!

141_4123.JPG There were three types of writing in Minoan times.  One kind they've been able to figure out, and the other two are mysteries.  No one has been able to decode the writing shown here. 

141_4127.JPG I carried Mariele around a lot because her little legs didn't take her far. 

146_4664.JPG We went to another beach on the South side of the island, near a town called Plakias, with our friends Daphne and Vassilios and their parents Tim and Eleni.  Daphne is in the light blue bathing suit and is being held by my Dad.  Uncle Paul is in with us.  This is the first time we actually went swimming in the Mediterranean sea. 

146_4665.JPG We're still in the water. 

146_4666.JPG It was April 14.  You could not call it warm, but I wouldn't call it cold even though some other people did.  Even Mariele went in for a little while. 

146_4668.JPG This picture shows everyone except for Vassilios and my Dad, who is taking the picture. 

146_4678.JPG This is Daphne's brother Vassilios.  He is about three. 

146_4667.AVI (Big movie file.)  Here is a movie showing a panorama from this little beach surrounded by hills. 

146_4685.JPG After the beach we walked through the town of Rethymno and found a nice restaurant for dinner.  Mariele hitched rides on Uncle Paul whenever she could. 

146_4688.JPG Kylene is holding Vassilios' and Daphne's hands while we go around looking for a place to eat. 

146_4690.JPG We are eating lunch in Hersonissos, overlooking the beach.  I am taking this picture so I'm not in it. 

146_4691.JPG My aunt Linda, my uncle Dik, and my cousins Natalya and Alexie flew from Boston to Greece for their spring vacation and met us for a couple days in Hersonissos.  Standing in the back row, from left to right:  Uncle Dik, Natalya, Dad, Uncle Paul, Allyce.  Middle row, from left to right:  me, Aunt Linda, Alexie, and Kylene.  Front row:  Mariele. 

146_4696.JPG From left to right:  me, Mariele, Alexie, Kylene.  Alexie is 12.  This is at a hotel.  I swam in the sea, in the outdoor pool, and in the indoor pool.  The indoor pool was heated salt water.  It also had an underwater jet stream that pulled you places and big sprayer things that turned on and blasted you every 10 seconds or so. 

146_4699.JPG Mariele's head was lying around while her body was swimming in the sea. 

146_4700.JPG When we go to the beach, my Dad usually builds sand sculptures that we can play in.  This time he built a motor boat.  I helped. 

147_4706.JPG After eating dinner we got a delicious dessert. Unfortunately I had to share it with my dad.

147_4707.AVI (Big movie file.) In many parts of Greece, instead of throwing your used toilet paper in the toilet, you had to throw it into special garbage cans.  That is because the septic systems aren't strong enough to handle much paper.  This special garbage can was at the restaurant in Hersonissos where I got the pagato dessert that I had to share with my dad.  It had a unique way of reminding you where to put the toilet paper. 

147_4709.JPG Mariele had a sudden growth spurt in Crete.  Maybe it's because of all the pagato that she had in her diet. 

147_4711.JPG This is the last wall I will scale on my trip. 

147_4713.JPG After my Mom left for Germany, we walked along the walls of the old city of Heraklion a couple of mornings before we went into work with my Dad.  Kylene is taking this picture of the rest of us on top of the wall.  There is a playground in the background, down below us. 

147_4716.AVI (Big movie file.) Here we are playing on the slide in the playground. 

147_4718.JPG The next day we found a different playground.  Everything, including the slide, was made out of wood.  We are playing a pirate game called "Ship". 

147_4719.JPG On the top of the wall there was a soccer field and we watched some kids play soccer. 

147_4720.JPG We were actually watching the soccer game from the tomb of someone named Kazantzakis.  We don't know what he did to become so famous so we're going to have to look it up. 

147_4721.AVI Because my mom was out of town we had to go to work with my dad. He gave a lecture. At the end we played around in the room.  I imitated my Dad's lecture style. 

147_4722.JPG I took notes about his lecture. I clapped with everyone else at the end.  Now I'm ready to go back to school because, after this, anything they throw at me in school has got to be pretty easy!

147_4728.JPG Here we are flying home, paying careful attention to the safety instructions on the overhead screen...

147_4732.JPG WE'RE HOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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