Crete: Beaches, palace, pool and fish spa

To break up all the relaxing and eating, we decided to take a day trip to Heraklion to see the Palace of Knosos, which was built around 1900 BC!  It's amazing to think a place has been around (and in good condition!) for that long.  It kind of puts other European ruins to shame.

This is the charging bull fresco behind the red columns.  The actual frescoes are located in a different museum; these are just replicas.

On the top right is the Throne Room, which is believed to have served as a shrine.  They think the throne (barely visible on the right of the picture) was for a priestess.  The building itself was 2 stories.  Again, amazing that so much of this is intact.

The grand staircase:

The longest (and oldest) stroller ramp on the island:

Following a morning of archaeological ruins, we had to balance things out with some sand.  We stopped a beach called Bali, which is a sandy cove with pretty calm water.  You walk down a huge staircase to get to the beach, so the view from the top was pretty great.    

Tiago's favorite pastime was eating sand.  There was no stopping that kid. 

After swimming for a while, he was getting fussy.  I thought he might not like the wet sand-covered swimsuit so we stripped him down.  He was happy after that!!  I love his facial expressions in all of these pictures.

 But let's be honest.  He's not always that happy and cute.  In an effort to keep it real, here he is screaming his head off in his carseat.

Continuing with the beach theme, here are a few pictures of when we were hanging out at the hotel beach.

I took this one to show how much hair he has in the back of his head!

The day before we left we went to a beach just down the road called Gerani.  It was tiny--at first we thought we were in the wrong place.  It's a small cove surrounded by rocks.  Luckily there weren't a lot of people.  Hyrum started talking to a guy (about soccer, of all things) and he said he was from Rethymnon.  He said it's a popular beach year round because the water is always calm and warm because it's so blocked off by rocks.  

The water was SO clear. It was completely transparent.  

 Tiago really enjoyed the water on this trip.  Especially when Hyrum was swinging him around.

After that beach we went back to the hotel pool.  It was small, but we had it to ourselves.  As much as I like the beach, it's nice once in a while to swim without any sand.  It's a lot less messy, and I didn't have to worry about Tiago putting sand and who-knows-what-else in his mouth.  

This was Hyrum's first time laying on one of these big floaties.  I think it was life changing.  It really is the best of both worlds: you can lay back and enjoy the sun, but the water is right there to cool you off.  It makes me want my own pool and floatie. 

To wrap up our trip to Greece, here are a few miscellaneous pictures. 

Souvenir shopping

Whenever we were in the room, we tried to build a wall of pillows around the bed so Tiago couldn't escape.  It didn't work very well. In many ways, things were easier when he couldn't move!  But probably not as fun.

 This view is something I could get used to!!

Hyrum's feet are usually in need of some sort of pedicure, so we took advantage of Greece's famous fish spas.  For 15 minutes these little fish nibbled away at his feet.  I am way too ticklish to put up with that kind of torture, but he seemed to enjoy it.

 Tiago spent a lot of time in his stroller as we enjoyed the beautiful area.