day 3 or I still hate kids.

so day 3 we woke up in beautiful Agios Nicholas, had some decent breakfast at the hotel before heading off to adventure #1.  nearby, the ancient site of Latto, which we got to just a wee bit off schedule, which as you'll learn becomes the theme of the trip.  lucky for us, the lady in charge of the site pulled up right before us, so we couldn't have gotten in otherwise, and our timing was perfect, which you'll learn becomes another theme for the trip.  ancient Latto was a roman town, incredibly large, spread out across two hills with walls way up high, and rooms for workers in one area.  it was very impressive, and considering is not very much talked about among the travel people, it really should be.  we wandered around for a while in utter amazement before hoping in the car and heading down to the site we have now visited three time, but the first two times it was closed, Gournia.

Gournia is a Minoan site, very important in the ancient times, and this was another impressive spread over a couple hills.  the bathroom was closed, we felt bad, but needed to go, so we cut our visit a little short, which was ironic, and then headed off towards our next destination, Sitia.

The road was familiar, as this was the way to Zakros, which we went to on our first trip.   the town of white buildings is perched on the side of this hill, very pretty and very cool.

we checked into our hotel, which was located right in the middle of town and headed out again for adventure #3 of the day.  1/2 way between Sitia and Palekastro, lies the monastery of Moni Toplou.  It was existed in this spot for hundreds of years, and is build like a fortress, there the monks have aided travels and protected Cretan people from pirates, raiders, turks, and even Nazis.  the fortress is very cool looking, perched up high on rocky hill, but the main reason we came here was the olive oil.  little did we know, they also had a tasting room for their wine, so diversion created and when it was over, we walked out with a bottle of wine, raki, and olive oil.

From up high on the hill the road wound down to the sea and we arrived at the beach and our adventure #4, the ancient site of Itanos.  this was not so impressive, but as we were pulling out we noticed more ruins up high on a hill, and we weren't about to go climbing up there, but that is fine.

we drove through the quiet town of Palekastro, and then on to adventure #5 the ancient town of Palekastro, or Roussolakis, which was also down near a beach.  this site was smaller, though we could see other parts of the site that were blocked off, which also became a theme of this damn trip.  we don't take blocked off sites that are clearly visible and should be open to us because we're special very well.

we headed back to Sitia for the evening, only briefly stopping at a dorian city that we saw a brown sign for and was surprise adventure #5 of the day, and then pushed our luck by following a brown sign to another minoan site, only to find that it was closed.  boo.  we got back to our hotel and then went to a lovely spot nearby for dinner were we had the most amazing olives, and the guy even gave us a huge tin of them to take with us.  and friday night at this hotel was apparently surrounded by yelling screaming children.  ugh.  day 3 in the books.