Iraklio (Heraklion)

From time to time one thinks to oneself:  "How many charming cafes and travel agencies does one town need?"   If your answer to this is "I can't hear myself think, they're building three more cafes and a travel agency next door" then you very likely have arrived on Crete and are in Iraklio. Or Heraklion.  The guide books are divided on this one, although the city itself appears to prefer Heraklion.  The deepest schizophrenia appears to have struck the airline websites, where multiple sites did not recognize the airport code for Heraklion International (HER), but happily acknowledged its existence after I selected Iraklio as a destination.

That's not the only linguistic fun to be had in Iraklio (or several other Greek cities).  The local tourist maps all print the street names in their romanized forms, but all of the street signs are in Greek.  I can only assume this is part of the tourist continuing education program, to help us all learn to pronounce Greek phonetically.  It's done wonders for me.

"Theotokopoulou Street"

And now, some pictures

The Venetian fortress, and a fairly neat looking boat.  The fortress was locked up the first time I saw it, and there is no signage -- fortunately I found out later that it has open hours.

Without naming names, I just wanted to reassure one McDonald's addict that this was a safe place to travel.  Note the drive-thru *and* McPlayland.  I didn't go in to look at the menu, but I think we can safely assume it's similar to the American offerings, only with a lot more lamb.

These two were sitting in the middle of a loud tourist district, ignoring the tourists but paying *very* close attention to that mousehole. Small cats (they are about the size of adolescent American housecats, but appear to be fully grown) abound in Iraklio.  I've stopped to talk to a number of them;  They're happy to sit indefinitely about three feet away from me, but any closer and they turn and leave.  None have collars, but they all appear well groomed and healthy.