Crete - Moni Toplou, Itanos... Day 7

Moni Toplou, means the monastery with a canon in turkish… it is yet another resistance place. Of the only 2 monasteries we visited, this one was my favorite. It was peaceful and there was a very nice exhibition of religious icons and wood block prints, explaining the reason behind the art.

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Afterwards we drove as far north as we were allowed to. The northern part of the area being a military zone, we stopped at Tenda bay and looked at the windsurfers. I even saw one doing a backflip. Tenda bay was really windy and the rocky shore was very dirty because junk from the sea is being washed ashore…
Lunch was enjoyed in Palekastro. We tasted some stuffed eggplants.
The afternoon was dedicated to lazyness : coffee by the pool, reading on our balcony…
Later during the day we stopped at the Itanos beach to look at some ruins in the open air. We easily found the remains of an early basilica… it is weird to see magnificent columns lying down…
We followed signs toward some other ruins. Roussolakkos is an open excavation site. The palace there could be larger than Cnossos, unfortunately most of the site is covered by olive trees.
We had dinner at a seaside restaurant where you go to the kitchen to select the fresh fish you want the cook to prepare. We didn’t have enough cash on us, so we asked them to wait until we drove to the hotel and back…their answer: “no worries, you can pay the rest tomorrow”! We did go to the hotel though; it was just 5 minutes away.