I'm back, and I'm smelly

The "back" is pretty self explanitory, the "smelly" will be explained promptly.

So Crete was beautiful.
My new year's resolution to be better with photos has already fallen to the wayside because I am looking at the photos I took and thinking that a) there are not nearly enough and b) they aren't the best photos I could have taken. I missed a lot of stuff like the palace and the pack of dogs or the cats that called the villa their home. I also missed the "skating rink" that was set up in the nearby town. I just about laughed aloud at thes kids skating on a thin layer of ice on what I think was plexi glass. And I us skating here as a liberal term since they were more clomping around and falling all over the place than skating. But C'est la Vie. I will learn from it and try to improve.
But really, there wasn't a lot of sight seeing. I was there to learn about vase shapes and how to draw them and that's mostly what I did. I was staying in the Villa Ariadne which was set up by Arthur Evans himself back in the early 1900's when he was doing the original excavations of Knossos. This was very interesting for me because if you know anything about the founding fathers and places in archaeological history Evans figures very promimently. The rooms we were in had of course been renovated and whatnot, but still. The below photo is a view of Heraklion from where we were staying. Very hilly, very beautiful. Very peaceful this time of year because there aren't that many tourists at all so most things in Knossos are not open.

That's a small view of the villa we were staying in. It's got a garden which was nice and which in summer I'm sure would be beautiful.

And this is an example of some of the stuff I was learning to draw. This is a kylix sherd, kind of like a wine goblet and fairly simple. They get more complex and confusing that that one, trust me.

Crete was also cold. Well, colder than I expected. It's funny how 10C in my head is something completely different from the 10C that was Crete in winter. I mean I survived easily enough, but it was chilly, particularly sitting in a concrete box most of the day without access to the sun. And really, had I packed a bit smarter it would have been more than fine. But that's were the smelliness comes in. I had really only packed two medium sweaters and some long sleeved shirts and some tanks for underneath. When you wear 4-5 layers each day, and both sweaters, they become fairly smelly fairly quickly. Who knew?

So that's pretty much it.

Except you know when you find out something that you just haven't thought about? Did you know that they have hedghogs running around free over here? That they just show up in peoples' gardens nd what not? I hadn't really thought about where hedgehogs come from, in my mind they come from the pet shop. Weird.