Kittens at Arkadi!

The moastery of Arkadi is probably one of the most famous sites in modern Cretan history, though since I am pretty sure very few people know much about modern Cretan history, I'm not sure how much this means. It is a very interesting place, and the history of Crete, like the history of Greece, is very interesting.

So, for those of you not in the know: in the late 1800s (1866, to be precise) the Cretans were involved in yet another struggle against their occupiers, who at this point in time were the Turks. A group of about a thousand monks and villagers (including women and children) were holed up in this monastery, fighting against a much larger Turkish force. When the Turks broke through the outer door, the defenders hid themselves in the powder magazine and, when the Turks gathered round to see what was going on, blew the whole thing up. The defenders are very famous on Crete and very well loved- their names are all over the place as street names and you see statues of them in major cities, like Rethymno. It's called the Holocaust of 1866, and the event forms part of the basis for Nikos Kazantzakis' book Freedom or Death.

The monastery is I think of Venetian design, but a common thought is that it looks like a mission from the American southwest. The comparison with the Alamo is, of course, a very common one, especially since Crete is often being compared with Texas. (More on that later.) It's very pretty, and since there aren't very many people there, quite peaceful.
This is a bullet that is loged in a dead tree. It is very famous, and I am about 90% certain that it is a Turkish bullet from the Holocaust, but since there weren't any signs there, I'm not certain.
The dead tree from a distance- it's a very neat looking tree.

But, of course, the best part of this trip was not the history or the site, but the baby animals who were there- in this case, kittens. In a box.
Awwww...

Isn't the cuteness almost too much?