Lost in Greece: Follow the Yellow Brick Road

First off, i have to address the elephant in the room, why are all the castles closed. We have been to 6 or 7 castles on this trip and every single one of the has been closed. There are 2 major reasons why the castles have been closed. Reason one, they close at 3:30 in the afternoon. This hit us many times on this trip because we travel around an island until 4 or 5 and get to the city we”re staying in and walk to a castle that is closed. The first couple were actually closed because they were under construction. There is no notice on the long walk or drive to a castle that it is under repair, and this is reason number 2. I hope this answers all of your questions about castles in greece, and if not please leave a comment below.

So today we got up at a decent hour, because we had a hour drive to Zakros for our hike reunion at the gorge of the dead. We packed up our shit and headed down to the breakfast nook which wound up actually being a ballroom scene fro mute shining full of many old and nearly dead French folk who literally smelled dead and had eaten most of the food. We were not impressed. So we went next door and taught the nice young lady how to make an iced americano much to the setting of her father who told us this was not the way it was done in greece, but she made it a ways and it was delicious. Then we went next door to get a lovely pastry for breakfast and sat and ate it while the with of Sitia slowly woke around us.

After our tasty treats, we hopped in the car and headed to the furthest east you can get on the island of crete, the lovely village of Zakros and the gorge of the dead awaited us. The main issue was we had no idea where it was. To be clear, there are 3 entrances to the gorge, a, b and c. A starts at 1/2 way down and b starts in the middle of a and the finish line. C starts in the village and we had no idea where that began. We started by driving through the village and around in circles for a few minutes. Then we saw some fancy hikers near a taverna and assumed they knew what they were doing so we parked behind them and before we could ask them a question, they disappeared into the mist. We wound up going into the taverna and asking the lovely man where to go and he was very nice and gave the lowdown, so we bought a coke from him and absolutely destroyed his toilet. News at 11.

From the village of Zakros to the bottom of the gorge is about 4k or more, its hard to tell all distances inside the gorge are clearly marked, but we wound up walking a few k before entering the gorge through the village and when you come out of the gorge you have to walk a bit through kato zakros to get to the beach.

The walk through the village was pleasant enough, and the great thing about gorges is they are almost entirely downhill. This is a blessing and curse because i requires very little effort, but can play havoc on your knees. After winding down a paved road we eventually found the sign that pointed towards the gorge, which was cleverly marked a black and gold stripe, which was our guide.on the path whenever we thought we might be going the wrong way.

This being our second time through the gorge, thought the first time starting from point a, we had a good idea what to expect, but the trail from the village had its own surprises including a lovely stream and so many goats. I stopped to take pictures as we headed down but after a while realized that i could take a picture of a different view after every few steps and it still would not express the magnitude of what we were actually seeing with our eyes. We reached the 1/2 way point as i told JW, you know this is about the time we start seeing people, and 10 seconds later a very large group of old people came up the trail towards us. We said hello to them all and they were not Germans so it was ok. After a couple hours we saw the signs of the end of the gorge ahead of us and passed through the opening and came out into the open sky. If was another marvelous experience and a great reunion with the gorge we walked on our very first trip to greece on our very first day in greece way back in 2013.

There was a bit of road walking at the end of the gorge and we headed straight for that taverna we ate at all those years ago and surprise it was still open the Akrogili Tavern, with a marvelous view of the sea. There were a few mishaps with the meal such as being served a plate of lamb bones but we addressed each error as it came and in the end it was a lovely meal.

After the meal we enquirer about a taxi ride to the top where our car was and the man at Akrogili said the taxi driver was not working until 3. This was very upsetting to me as it was only 1 and we still a few things left to do today. So we walked down the main drag of kato zakros and asked at a different taverna about a ride and nice man motioned to his helper who offered to tak us both us for 15 EU. The ride took left that 20 minutes so it was so over priced, but we were happy to not have to walk the 4k back up the gorge instead.

Once we got to the car we headed to Toplou Monestary where we have an infatuation with the wine. We arrive at their tasting room to fine it empty of people when a nice man came out of the shadows and told us the tasting room had moved to the monestary. We got back in the car and drive to the monestary ad bought some olive oil and wine and then headed to AgNick where we would be spending the night.

The drive was miraculous and I absolutely adore driving on these tiny wining and twisty roads. JW has a great ability once we start these long drives of sleeping through the entire thing. I marvel at her complete and utter dedication as my copilot to fall completely and utterly asleep as soon as we start the trek.

Before very long we are driving into AgNik and headed down to the harbor where our hotel El Greco sits on the corner of a minor part of the harbor but facing the sea. We head up to our room and its the corner room of the hotel, and is very spacious. We then take a break to clean up a bit and head into town to have a lovely drink on the inland lake the city is famous for and had a lovely chat with Virginia Browne. That’s my mom in case you didn’t know. On the way to dinner we stopped in a Greek bio-store to buy some whine and olive oil as presents for some people. Then off to the Parakosiolo Taverna one of our all time favorites for a delicious meal of mezz out the wazzoo