Zanzibar, part 2

Other than the street wandering, which is full of wonders, there's something else amazing about Stone Town: the power is out. The power, in fact, has been out for weeks. Again, nobody cares. I know of entire states that would be shut down by such circumstances; here in Zanzibar, they're used to a spotty power grid. The bigger hotels (which are still small) have generators, which are on and off at scheduled times. The music festival, also running on generators, has proceeded wtihout a hiccup. Nobody has explained to anyone exactly why the power is out, or why it will take weeks to fix it- something to do with a severed cable from the mainland, and probably some politics. And it has not slowed anyone down. The best thing about all of this is gettng to walk the labyrinth of Stone Town streets, a complete and utter maze in broad daylight, in the dark. And I'm not being sarcastic- weaving through these canyons, it's dark, indeed- but as I've said before, there's dark, and there's dark. This is not a scary dark- I'd call it a dynamic dark. WE have flashlights, and as you walk through the streets you see a few houses with candles, and a small bonfire at the odd open space. Small bands of children (or bands of small children?) are out playing in the alleys. At one spot there's a bit of an expanse and a wall for sitting; someone has rigged a small TV to a generator, and people are gathered like it's a movie theater. (For the record, last night it was Wanted with Angelina Jolie, and as we walked past even I was riveted by the scene on top of the Chicago El when she does that cool move to duck the tunnel. Showstopper.) Lots of people are out on their stoops chatting. If someone walks by with a cigarette, you can see him coming from way off as a pinpoint of light. The stars are phenomenal, and there's music off in the distance. This place feels so much older than it is, anyway- the darkness at night seems to feel right, and it's a really nice way to see the city. And we approach our hotel, all lit up and waiting for us, after the music festival late at night.

Here's where the "rest for the weary" part comes in. This place, the Zanzibar Coffee House Hotel, is probably the coolest place I've ever stayed. For starters, it's an old Arab house- meaning, thick stone walls, very inwardly focused, and designed around two different light wells. Technically they might be called courtyards, but they're tiny- just enough to let a tiny shaft of light down into the lobby, which most of the day just washes down part of the wall. (Good plan. You don't want to be standing in that shaft of light here.) The rooms branch off around the two light wells, and it's even kind of a maze inside the hotel, because another two twisting stairways lead you up to the roof. This makes perfect sense; it is dark at the bottom and gets lighter and breezier as you go up. You'd think the darkness at the bottom would be a bid thing, but coming in off the street and out of the tropical sun, it's delicious. And the heat rises up and out through the airshaft.

The alternative, also great, is to climb a few flights of stairs to the shaded rooftop lounge. It's one of my new favorite places in the world. It's high enough to catch the sea breeze, and stays comfortable even in the hottest part of the day. It's got a balcony on all four sides, with triangular tables tucked into each corner. There's a room in the middle with shutters you can open and close as needed. That room: filled with low chairs and cushions. Perfect height for reading, beer drinking, lounging horizontally in the breeze, or, in Greg Giles fashion, starting upright with a book and slowly sliding to horizontal napping mode. There's a stocked fridge at the bottom of the stairs, so you grab your alternating cold ginger ale and cold beer, write it down on a little notepad, and head up to the lounge for a couple of hours.

And speaking of lounging, there is my room, my other new favorite place in the world. Because we booked this room at the last minute, over 4 months ago, the only one left was the "Arabica Suite." They will have to drag me out of here, I mean it. The ceiling, at my best guess, is 18' high. There are 6 arched window alcoves with layers and layers of carved shutters. There are two enormous window seats. These are about 6 inches off teh floor, with curved backs, covered with what the brochure described as "loungey pillows." I am lying on one to write this, right now.

The other fabulous feature: a huge, huge I tell you, Zanzibar bed. It is so elaborately carved that I want to cry with joy. A Zanzibar bed is usuallypretty tall, and instead of 4 corner bedposts, there are carved pieces coming up from the center of the headboard and footboard. These hold up the canopy frame, and the yards and yards of mosquito netting. I feel like a princess. There is a candelabra over my bed. And a cool stone floor, and beautiful wood furniture. This room is as big as my house. It's my only non-budget hotel room of this trip; truly, if I'd had much choice, I would have felt obligated to go cheap. But I'm glad I didn't. My travels have been miraculously smooth so far, but this is such a great rest. After Cairo, and an overnight flight, and a few weeks of changing time zones and gadding about on different continents, I need it. Today: I woke up whenever. Breakfast on the roof; shopping and strolling with my friend Kate; then all 3 of us had a great lunch, got our books, and spent the hottest part of the day reading and napping on the roof. Blissful and breezy. It's such an embarrassment of riches: it's so much fun in the streets that it's hard to come in. The rooftop is so relaxing you never want to leave. The music festival is so great you don't want to miss any of it. And the room....well, as I've already said, they'll have to drag me out of here.

Much more to come- I hope nobody is feeling obligated to read all of this verbiage, but I can't help it!! My entries are getting wordy but there is so much to say- the only solution, obviously, is for you to come join me here. Best to all on Valentine's Day back home-

Day 30. Zanzibar, Sauti Za Busara, and Rest for the Weary (part 1)

Oh sweet slice of exotic tropical heaven. I love Zanzibar. This is not news. Anybody would love Zanzibar. This is a fascinating, fascinating place, and lovely in a way unlike any other place I've ever been. This particular part of the trip is a Big Deal to me, personally and academically. Personally: two of my favorite people, Greg and Kate Giles, live in Dar Es Salaam. When I told them I was studying Zanzibar and also that I would love to come by and see them on my world tour, they said hell yes, and invited me to a music festival in Zanzibar. One does not turn down such an invitation. They get their own blog post later. Academically: because Paul Tesar is a fantastic professor and understands that people work harder when they're excited about things, he let us pick our own sites for our last studio project, and thus I got to study Zanzibar.

A brief bit of background, for anyone who hasn't heard me yammer on about it for the last few months: Zanzibar is a small island off the coast of Tanzania, about 90 minutes by ferry from Dar. It's been part of Tanzania since 1964 (Tanganika + Zanzibar = Tanzania) but it's semi-autonomous. What makes it such a facinating place: it's a spice island, and for centuries because of its spices and safe harbor and trade winds, it has attracted all of the following: Persians, Indians, Arabs, Chinese, the British, the Dutch, and African mainlanders, to name a few. Because of the trade wind situation, people didn't just come through Zanzibar- they stayed for six months at a time, until the winds reversed and they could sail home; they all brought their cultures with them. And because of the money to be made here, many stayed permanently- the majority of these being Omani traders and Indian merchants, with a good mix of everything else.

Too late for this to be brief, but a bit more: Stone Town, the main city on the island, is a World Heritage Site due to its unique history and design. It's in danger, literally, of collaps: 80% of the buildings here are decaying or damaged, due to a lack of funds for upkeep, and problems with using a porous stone as a building block in a tropical climate. For all that, which is everywhere evident, Stone Town is really lovely. To create shade (just south of the equator, after all) people built tightly. The streets are no more than 8 or 10 feet wide. Most places you could lie down and touch the walls on both sides. The buildings are tall for such narrow streets, 4 to 6 stories, so it's like walking through a canyon. Details vary, but gorgeously carved doors are everywhere, and every single building is made of the same coral limestone and plaster. All along the streets, every kind of bench, stoop, and step is carved into the buildings and shopfronts, so people are hanging out everywhere, quite comfortably.

Despite a few mishaps I am generally pretty good at navigating, particulary if I have looked at a map ahead of time. I spent weeks and weeks documenting this place, so I should know it fairly well, at least in concept. I mean, I drew diagrams color-coded with everything from architectural origin to level of decay, for every single building in Stone Town, and mapped every single landmark and significant street. On paper. On the ground, I could not navigate my way across town for love nor money, since everything looks the same. And if you figure out a few landmarks in the daylight, forget it- once the shopfronts close, the whole streetscape changes again.

The beautiful thing? Nobody cares. The whole point of wandering Stone Town is to spend a few hours being pleasantly lost. It's not nearly as big as I imagined it, anyway, and the streets are lined with shopes and people sitting in the shade and children playing games. Walking in the shady streets, even the equatorial sun is no problem. Eventually you'll hit water, or a road for cars, or the old fort, then you re-orient and dive back in.

The labyrinth I was looking for at Knossos? Here. But one fun thing: you can hire a walking taxi if you need to. For about $1.50, they'll cheerfully guide you back to your hotel.

(to be continued!)

Day 27. Islamic Cairo

Decided to give it a go, alone on foot today. This is bigger than it sounds- Cairo is pretty overstimulating, and I actually feel a little dazed. I struck out on foot yesterday for a couple of hours, in search of food and general orientation; ino two hours I found nothing that I was sure was a restaurant, and certainly nowhere to sit and have coffee. I found water, and grocery stores with canned food, but not much to eat. As I had missed breakfast at my hotel due to the Giza tour, and skipped lunch while touring, this was getting to be problematic. (At this point, a big thank-you to Mom for the Whole Foods snacks!)

I did make one friend, at a juice stand. He gave me the only real smile I have seen in my 4 days in Cairo. He was ecstatic when I went in for water. "Thank you!! Hellooo!! Welcome!!" So I also asked for an orange. He looked crestfallen, so I said, "...and also juice?" So he clapped his hands and said, "For you try this." And he poured a small splash of something white into a glass from a milk bottle he fished out of a giant freezer. Sweet slushy ice-cold coconut mikk. Fabulous. He gave me something else to taste, which he said was from India; tamarind juice, I think. I thought too late, "Hmm- I wonder if that was crushed ice, or just frozen coconut milk? Was there water mixed in that drink? Do I have a bout of water-bourne illness coming on?" Oh well, if so, I have Cipro. If that didn't do it, the handsful of salty roasted pumpkin seeds my cab driver kept plying on me today will. But they were really good, too, and it's so hard to refuse people who are trying to be nice. (Which is how I got giardia in Costa Rica, but that's a separate story.)
And, frankly, not so many people I've met this week are particularly nice.

Today's desination, on foot, is Islamic Cairo. My guidebook points out that it's no more or less Islamic than the rest of the city, just so-named for the number of medieval mosques in the neighborhood. This walk is by turns beautiful and chaotic. Cairo is one of the dirtiest places I've ever seen, but there are spots that are swept clean and are bright and open. Winding through the main pedestrian street in the medieval quarter, I discover all the hassling and unwanted attention I had mistakenly expeceted in Istanbul. This time it was aggressive and not at all charming. You'd accept a handshake, only to find that that person wouldn't let go. You'd walk down a lane only to have someone fully block your path to deliver a sales pitch. I went down one street and was proposed to, in a vulgar way, six times. The entrepreneurial optimism in places like this is actually kind of endearing. People seem to have a belief that, for the right price, they can sell you anything. Bicycle tire. Tacky t-shirt. Water pipe. (I can't pass one of those without laughing about the "smug hookah" in those "Unhappy Hipsters" photos.) But I was at the end of my patience when, trying to buy a gift in one stall, the guy said, "What, why not sit down, I'm not going to kill you." Which did not, in fact, feel all that welcoming.

I fought my way pack out of that particular nest of the old city, and came back through a produce market, the nicest part of the walk. Favorite scene: a small baby, sitting happily in a pile of lettuce on top of a vegetable cart. People here were a little friendlier. The loveliest part, through here, was a quiet alley with shafts of light coming down through a wooden roof, lined on both sides with Bedouin tent makers. Beautiful.

At the end of this walk, I see the Citadel, my destination, in sight. A kid, about 17 years old, stops me and says hello. He asks where I'm from, and I say USA. "You need help? What are you looking for?" And I say, "That's the Citadel, right?" And he says yes, and I'm thinking, how nice. "One more question," he says. "Do you want to kiss me?"

"No," I enunciate. "No, I do not."

Still fuming half a block later at a cultural milieu which makes this kind of behavior seem rational to young men, I am waylaid at the back side of the Citadel by a helpful man who apologizes and says it's closed until 3 for a visiting dignitary. He says he's not a guide, doesn't want mone, maybe I want to go visit the Cairo Blue Mosque and then come back? He'll show me the way. He leads me down a side street which is packed with people so it's not scary, but his story is fishy. He talks about the 40 pound entrance fee to the mosque, and I say, "Oh, that's fine, then I'll just take some pictures outside," and he is so dismayed that I realize he is working for the mosque. When he realizes I am not a cash customer he kindly points me the rest of the way and turns back. I double back as well and go to the front of the Citadel- which of course is open. And it was worth the trip, ancient and quiet.

So. I am not proud of this fact, but I am writing this from a cafe- in the mall. After a few hours of full-on hassling, I need a break. I saw this mall in Lonely Planet and scoffed, "what kind of a desperate lame Westerner would come all the way to Cairo and end up in a MALL?" And now I know, exactly, what it takes to drive someone in search of new vistas, to a coffee shop in a mall downtown. I just drank two cappucinos, with dark chocolate on top. And I ate chicken . Clearly I am in mild culture shock. But I am sufficiently fortified- I think I can head back out.

(note from a day later, things actually deteriorated after that. The incident with my obnoxious and amorous 21 year old cab driver, who bought himself a ticket on my Nile dinner cruise and tried to be my date for the evening, probably deserves a full post. But it's too awkward and I am still mad. Another day of Cairo travel under my belt and I can say, with confidence, I am so glad I came. I am so glad I saw the pyramids. I am so glad I rode a camel. I am so glad I saw the Egyptian Museum. And I am so glad I am leaving, in exactly half an hour.)

Day 26: Pyramids.

I spent the bulk of my day with the Ahmets. Ahmet number one is my driver, and an Egyptology and tourism student, and alleged former Olympic medal holder (100 meter dash, Moscow.) Ahmet number 2 is my pyramid guide, and a Bedoin. As in, nomad, and tents, and he has traveled the 2-month journey on camels across the Sahara from Egypt to Libya. They are both characters. Ahmet 1 will not stop talking about Egyptian aphrodesiacs, despite the fact that I keep changing the subject. Ahmet 2 is a big fan of American rappers- he things Eminem is ok, especially after he saw 8 Mile, but he thinks poor Tupac was just beautiful.

Giza is only 11 miles from Cairo; in traffic about an hour. A harrowing hour, in fact- it's not so much that people aren't following the rules, it's that there aren't any. I watched a 7-lane-across merging free-for-all this morning, on a road with no lanes marked at all. People weave and tailgage and play chicken. Pedestrians? God bless them. They just sally forth into traffic, no matter how many lanes or what speed, as there is no other way to cross. Cars don't actually slow down for them, but they do swerve, so that's good. I tested all this out this afternoon and there's no combination of signals that makes it ok for pedestrians to cross. There's one with a blinking yellow light, in the center of two other blinking yellow lights on a different rhythm- I have no idea what that means. Then there's the pedestrian green light complete with the animated walking pedestrian- that one just seems to make the cars angry as they speed through. Red means 30 seconds of "drive like hell," so that's insane. Your best hope, really, is just to step our into moderately-paced traffic. And gridlock.

Anyway. For this and other reasons, I went with the tour offered by my hotel: $50, car and guide for the day, Giza-Saqqara-Memphis. I didn't ask if it included my entry fees; no, but that's fine, I was happy to pay the 30 pounds, about $6, to get in. Another travel surprise. As we approach Giza, Ahmed 1 starts giving me detailed instructions- on how to deal with the camel guys.

I stare back blankly for a moment and say, "That's ok, I'll just walk." Because who, other than a dazed tourist, would actually do the camel thing? I had no intention whatsoever. Ahmed informs me that it's the only way- the complex is 12 km and I'll never see it all if I don't go on a camel. But if I'd rather have a horse I can do that instead. Again I say, "Can't you just walk? I thought camels were just, like, you know, tourist extra." And he says, "Trust me. And anyway, you'll never ride a camel again, so why not now? But when you are talking to the camel guys, don't say anything about money. They'll rip you off. I'll deal with that."

Next thing I know I am seated on a bench, and Ahmed 2 is gesturing at a wooden map of Giza and telling me my Camel Package Options. I go for the big one- ride up a big sand dune for pictures, and see all the pyramids, and the Sphinx. And, contrary to every intention (not to mention the promise by Ahmed 1 to help me,) I am haggling for a camel.

I confirm later on that, yes, this is a racket. And you can indeed drive directly up to the pyramids, and just walk around, for 1/10 of what I paid. However, and this is a BIG however, that would have been a tragic mistake. I did briefly get involved in the tourist crush to get an up-close picture of the Sphinx, and that part was a nightmare- jostling and herding and lots of hassling by people selling things. 10 minutes of that was plenty, and if I'd driven in, that's all I would have gotten. Instead, I climbed onto a camel. complete with festive traditional camel headgear. (Camels, for the record, are way, way, taller than horses.) I got to ride in through the back entrance and across a really nice stretch of Sahara. From way off in the distance, the blowing sand made the pyramids look hazy and misty, and you couldn't see any people. There was a stunning view back down into Cairo.

We did ride up a giant sand dune, high enough to take some great shots. Ahmed made me do a tourist photo shoot- you know, mock leaning on the pyramids, one foot up in the air resting on the pyramid, etc, and though I would normally object to such shenanigans, they are hilarious, particularly the one of Ahmed and me doing "Walk Like an Egyptian." Then we got closer, much closer, and finally close enough to stand on the base of the biggest pyramid. Crazy, they look smaller as you get close because the perspective looking up is all skewed. Ahmed told me that Napoleon is responsible for most of the damage; the story has it that he spent 2 weeks shelling the pyramids to destroy them but never made much headway and eventually gave up. Went down into the crowd to see the Sphinx, exactly as enigmatic as I would have guessed. After that, I parted ways iwth Ahmed 2 and went with Ahmed 1 to Saqqara.

Again, as luck has it, lots of the monuments were closed for repairs. There are enormous, enormous excavations everywhere- it looks exactly like the scenes from Raiders of the Lot Ark with the frantic digs. Lots of these deep wells, way out from the base of the big pyramid there, contain stairs and secret doors- hidden passages into the tomb. The pyramid here, a stepped one, the Dzoser's tomb, is the first pyramid; this stepped one gradually led to the development of the rest.

Ahmed led me into some smaller tombs, where people are studying the heiroglyphics and wall painings. The most exciting: there's a small pyramid onsite, which really is crumbled to the point it looks like a sand dune, that you can enter. This is another thing I had no plans to do, having read that it is brutal on your back and knees todo the crouching walk down the steep ramps to get into one of these things, and neither my back or knees are up for anything risky. It was a short climb in, though. The ramp, fortified with steel square tubing for footholds, is at about a 45 degree angle, and you have to do it crouched forwards as far as you can get, holding onto the rails so you don't pitch forward face-first. You can briefly stand up at the bottom, then you enter a long stone passageway about 3' high. You just have to duck and go for it, and it's uncomfortably long. Another brief respite, another stone passage, and you're in the tomb room, with a high vaulted ceiling covered in stone stars, and some really well preserved wall paintings.

It was all pretty mind-blowing. It has not sunk in that I stood on the base of a pyramid today, or saw the Sphinx, or rode a camel through at least a little bit of desert. I came back and looked in the mirror, and for the record, I looked a complete mess. But I really, really liked what I saw. My hair was all frazzly and tangled, and my cheeks were sunburned, and I was covered in sand, and my clothes had holes in them in two places. (And not to put too fine a point on it, but I'm pretty sure I smelled like my camel.) But my hair was a mess from the Sahara breeze and not an all-nighter, and my cheeks were pink from a few hours out in the Cairo sun and not pale from weeks at my desk, and I was covred in ancient sand from eroding pyramids instead of graphite and zap-a-gap. Even with the camel aroma, I'm calling it a major improvement.

Day 25. Cairo.

I am watching Looney Tunes in Cairo. One of those "best-laid plans" situations- I got a phone call, in my cab, from my carefully-researched pension, telling me I was staying somewhere else tonight, and moving tomorrow. I'm not sure why- I was struggling with my cab driver's bluetooth thingy- but, when you get cab phone calls of this nature, really, you just go with it. Plans of an evening to re-group, do laundry, catch up on correspondence- on hold. This place is super sketchy. The streets around me are pitch black at 6 pm, and I'm looking at the back side of a giant row of billboards onto a superhighway. Thank heavens I have earplugs. I made it as far as the corner store for water, and some kind of sweet flaky unidentifiable bread. I am a relatively bold traveler, but striking out from this particular locale, in the dark, is a Bad Idea.

The great news? I have 378 channels. What are the odds, really, in a place that doesn't have a sign on the street? I mean, faucets are dripping and I just heard an epic catfight, actual caterwauling, from the airshaft below me, and it's a "provide your own towel" kind of place. Again I say, 378 channels. Now, I wasn't born yesterday, and I know that even in a foreign language, 300 of those channels will have nothing decent on. But still- I am simultaneously watching Looney Toons, and the Simpsons Movie, and old Bradley Cooper/Jennifer Garner movie, and about 6 soccer games. I have BBC, CNN, and an Arabic MTV, where fully-covered women are doing solid-gold dances. I have both Nickelodeon, and Al Jazeera Child, which looks like a version of the Muppetts. Al Jazeera itself has just done what can only be described as a loving and sentimental tribute, in English, to the New Orleans Saints and the passion behind their Super Bowl win. I have TV Korea, TV Jordan, TV Saudi. And I'm not making fun, really, but so far there are 3 channels of camels.

I feel sure there's a B-movie or two in my future*- our most mediocre films, the kinds featuring Vin Diesel or the Rock, seem to be showing up a lot here. But tomorrow: Pyramids, Memphis, Saqqara. More soon!


*addendum to this post, immediately after writing I flipped to a Billy Baldwin movie. But I settled on Once Upon A Time in Mexico, because who doesn't love a good shoot-out involving Johnny Depp and Antonio Banderas?

Day 24. Last in Athens. Overuse of the word "lovely."

5:15 am arrival in Athens; harrowing dreamlike trip back to hotel on 3 trains, one bus; total 1 hour and 45 sleep-deprived minutes, including a 20-minute walk through the dark Port of Piraeus. And now:

Lovely lovely hotel let me check in at dawn. Sleep till 1:30 pm. Lovely lovely rainy snack and Greek coffee in the Plaka. Later, lovely lovely fish dinner with Kristen H's lovely lovely Greek friend Ellie. Lovely lovely evening channel-flipping in my hotel. Hair clean. Clothes clean. Legs shaved. Packed for Cairo. All is well.

Day 23: Labyrinth.

I am pretty seriously amused right now. I have just toured the Palace of Knossos- home of the ancient Minoan civilization, on the island of Crete. We studied this place in school, with it's off-kilter upside-down columnst and lustral basins and ridiculously intricate floor plan. For some reason, as I was paring down my list of must-sees along the way, I just couldn't drop this one off, as long as it was within striking distance of Athens.

"Striking distance" is actually a bit of a stretch, depending on your definition. Because of the off-season ferry schedules, there was no painless way to get here and back, so I've committed myself to two consecutive overnight ferries. Arriving here in the dark at 6 am. Returning tomorrow to Athens at 5 am, doubly painful because the subway doesn't run until 5:50, and my hotel check-in is at 2. So, this was work. I figured that when a boat big enough to have goth a swimming pool and a night club comes ashore at dawn, someone would have coffee brewing somewhere- not exactly. Because I am just that smart, I also managed to store my Heraklion map in my luggage, locked up at the hotel in Athens. So, having no better option, I went with the "walk uphill" tactic hoping to find something promising in the dark. Other than a stand serving french fries (??) to cab drivers, the streets were dark.

6 am dark, though, isn't as scary as, say, 1 am dark. For starters, you know the sun will eventually come up; also, it's not like there are drunkies stumbling out of bars around you or something. Wrong again: 6 am and the music is still thumping, and bouncers are still camped out in their doorways from last night. Two women, I'd say early 50's, sail out into the street dressed as pirates. Thankfully, about 15 minutes uphill in the dark, there were signs of life- coffee and a 24/7 internet cafe, full of adolescent gamers before dawn. Good place to pull up a map, at least, and watch the sun come up.

All that aside, I made it to the Palace. Frankly, it's mostly rubble. You can at least trace the massive web of foundations around this giant complex. The most fun, though, is the re-invented areas. I'd say "re-constructed" or "preserved" but those are pretty far off the mark. At some point in time, a guy from Oxford got involved with this place and gained permission to excavate. In his day I don't think his methods raised any eyebrows, but by our standards of historic preservation, he took some giant liberties. Because the crumbling sparkly gypsum foundations were so badly weathered, he thought concrete reinforcement might be a good idea. He pieced together some rooms here, some corners there, with a good dose of both imagination and European flair. He painted things. He built things. He detailed faux wood grain in paint on the concrete beams, for effect. He vividly described "lustral basins" as sacred ritual pools, although there's no evidence they actually held water. He named one reconstruction the "Piano Nobile," as if this were a Venetian Palazzo. He conjectured "tri-columnar shrines" and made up all kinds of purposes for rooms, which he lovingly re-imaged with a combination of original stone, concrete, and liberal paint. It's as if a 12-year old were given a set of legos and an hour, and you said, "GO! See what this might have been."

And it is, after all, really interesting. Seeing it in person, I think this man was at least a little nutty, if not downright Quixotic, but his handprint is everywhere, and you can't help but like him. The bright colors do bring the place to life, a little, and lustral basins seem as plausible an explanation as any other, and who's to say that wasn't a throne room, after all? In some places, sure, he was way off (faux wood-grain concrete, for example) but he did make some sound educated guesses about Minoan architecture and culture. At some point I went from, "Hmm, interesting foundation patterns," to "this guy is a combination of Indiana Jones and the Mad Hatter and Walt Disney." It's worth a trip.

The real reason I came, I confess, wasn't for the Palace at all. It was for the myth of King Minos and the Minotaur, because I am seriously just a big kid. I know, academically, that there wasn't really a labyrinth here, if "here" is actually the origin of that story as rumored. If you look at a floor plan, you'd just have to describe it as "labyrinthine," because that's just how those cagey Minoans built. Probably it did keep people from barging into the king's throne room, as there's no direct way to get anywhere. Even so. I wanted to see the seeds of that story, and traipse around the labyrinth. And I did. I feel a little like I did when I went to Loch Ness years ago, and tried really, really hard to see the Loch Ness Monster. And I'd do it again today. I know. Unlikely on every level. To try and spot one of these mythical creatures defies all logic- but really, deep down, don't you want to believe that you could?