Friday 14th November. Hersonissou.

We are a bit stuck now as we only have 4 days left, we want to stay on the coast, but don't have the time to go far as there is plenty to be seen in Heraklion.
From Anogia we had a good drive down through the hills to Tilissos, 

Sheep being brought down from the mountain

An unexpected barrier across the gorge.

The view in the direction of the coast and Heraklion

where there is a small Minoan settlement which is currently being excavated. It was very pretty and we looked around uninterrupted, and watched a large group of Greek archaeologists painstakingly scraping and dusting in the exceedingly small rooms they were excavating. We were a little concerned by the amount of excavation being done by a large digger rather than manually, and the dumper truck tipping fresh gravel into what looked like original Minoan rooms, presumably the archaeologists knew what they were doing. It will be interesting to see what it looks like when it's finished in a couple of years time.

The steps down into the water cistern.

Painstakingly scraping years of dirt out of the old walls.

Painted Ladies, masses of them!

We had perhaps foolishly chosen to look at Hersonissou, a little too close to Malia but there was a nice looking hotel in Piskopaino, which is a village just north of the town. We eventually found the Casa di Veneto in a side street which from it's beginning gave us the warning that from here on there was no way out. And the signs were correct, to escape meant going on and on along a street becoming for ever narrower and eventually the only way out was up a one way street which seemed to be universally ignored, so I did too. The guest house is a comfortable old town house, converted immaculately into traditional Cretan suites which were very comfortable. Very much designed to keep you out of the heat and to keep one cool. Unfortunately the rooms were consequently very dark and a bit dingy with heavy old solid furniture so it was not somewhere we wanted to hang around in. There was a hot tub on our balcony but it had been packed up for the winter. By the time we had checked in and then driven down to the coast, it was feeling less than summery, the wind had got up, the clouds rolled in from the mountains and a swim was no longer as attractive as it had seemed 3 hours before. 

Like many other attractive touristy villages, the old part of the town had managed to keep it's character. We went in search of somewhere for supper and were approached by Mr Front of House in every bar/restaurant we passed. This puts us off a bit so we walked to the end of the street and started to come back along a quiet side street which seemed to have nothing going on at all, until we found a deserted taverna which if it were open we thought would fit the bill precisely. So we checked that they'd be open later and returned in 2 hours to find it occupied by what seemed to be the owners family and her friends. Now, we are finally getting the hang of ordering food on Crete and tonight we got it absolutely right, we ate excellent mezedes:  Little plates of snails, fried courgettes, lambs livers in rosemary, and beetroot. All starters but the quantities they serve you leaves the necessity for a main course quite unnecessary.
We are also slipping into the  very bad Cretan habit of having an ouzo as an appetizer, something I have  never liked before, but rather enjoy now!
Having eaten our way through this feast we were then served a small decanter of raki (small, but more than enough!) and some delicious sweet cake, which we are advised you must eat with raki because if you don't there's a danger of your throat being damaged by the coarseness of the alcohol!