Interlude 9. Heraklion–Munich: October 28–29
We planned our 2024 trip through Greece with breaks throughout, during which we could stay in apartments and live semi-normal lives for a few days between multi-day hikes. Trekking Hellas hikes are extremely well-organized and the hotels are always comfortable and hospitable, but it is tiring to move from place to place every night, and keeping up with laundry can be a challenge.
So every week or two, we’d stop someplace, live in a house, and catch our breaths. We picked our break locations for geographic convenience, historical interest, and nostalgia. These interludes were just as much a part of the trip as the hikes.
All things come to an end, and at the end of October, it was time to go home. For whatever reason, I couldn’t get us home from Heraklion to Charlotte on the same day. The only flight to Munich left in the evening. We had to spend a night in Germany on the way back.
Our last morning in Kavousi, we fed our porch kitties, cleaned up, and then headed south toward Ierapetra.
That would let us drive along some more of the south coast of Crete and then cut north toward Heraklion, touring more of central Crete in the process. Approaching Heraklion from the south would bring us right past Knossos, which I thought we should visit.
The drive was pretty, to be sure. But Knossos? No dice. On October 28, hardly high season, the parking lot was mobbed and the sides of the roads were parked up. I remember visiting the place in 1990. I took a bus from central Heraklion. There were other tourists at the site, but nothing resembling a mob. There certainly weren’t hordes of rental cars in a giant parking lot, or masses of tour buses.
Knossos hasn’t gotten bigger.
We decided we didn’t need to visit Knossos after all.
Instead, we drove back east on the coastal highway to the first coastal town with beach frontage we saw. We got off in Kokkini Hani and had a final stroll along the beach. It was finally starting to feel like autumn.
We had a last seafood lunch at To Kyma. They had the best keftedakia!
And then it was time to head to the airport. Turning in the rental car doesn’t bear describing; suffice it to say, it was not intuitive, but we either successfully returned it, or handed it over to a car-thief and the rental company never followed up.
Checking in for our flight was likewise stressful. According to the Telegraph, Heraklion Airport is the worst airport in Europe. I suspect this is largely the result of Crete’s tourist industry having grown exponentially in the past few years, and that the awfulness is largely seasonal. We certainly didn’t have any difficulty with it when we flew back to Athens in 2023.
But. There is certainly room for improvement. The ladies’ room had some issue with the toilets–tourists apparently can’t learn not to throw toilet paper in the toilets (you can’t put toilet paper in the toilets in Greece!!!!), which doesn’t do great things to the plumbing functionality.
The check-in procedure is the usual chaotic European thing, where individual flights check in at specific desks. You can’t check in before the airline decides it’s time, and then everyone checks in at once. In a mob. Fortunately, Germans (we were on Lufthansa) are fairly organized about these things, and most of our fellow travelers seemed to have the attitude that the Greeks weren’t going to be organized so they would be.
Then there are the gates. There are not enough seats for all the passengers waiting to board. This creates more chaos and confusion, though the shopping area is quite attractive, so wandering around on foot isn’t so bad.
In any case, we all ended up on board the plane. The flight to Munich was uneventful though it was absolutely packed.
Our bags were checked through to Charlotte, so all we had to do was walk out the airport with our backpacks. I’d gotten us a room at a Radisson near the airport. We had to take a cab–walking is NOT a possibility–which cost us €25 for a nine-minute ride. I don’t know if this is some airport pricing thing or if all cabs in Germany now cost €3 a minute. I hope not!
The rest of the trip home went as well as can be expected. After another €25 euro cab ride the next morning, we were back at the terminal. Our flight to Charlotte was utterly full. We’d cleverly selected aisle seats on either side of a center section three rows from the back of the plane, thinking that no one would willingly choose the remaining middle seat. But when the plane is full, someone ends up in that seat, willing or not. We discovered that we were sitting on either side of a man who never once got up the entire flight.
And then we were in Charlotte! Global Entry worked better than it ever has–the agent just waved us through. Charlotte baggage claim was slow as always. Our good friend Pat Kennedy was waiting to drive us home, bless him. One stop on the way to Greenville, at a Waffle House.
And we were back.