Spinalonga, the island of lepers, can not be forgotten.

There is no man who has not heard the story of Spinalonga, the island of lepers. 

Although the island's history starts since prehistoric times and continues in antiquity, the Byzantine times, the Venetian and Ottoman rule, Spinalonga is known primarily as a place of martyr, a place of exile for thousands of lepers who first came here in 1904 and lived at the buildings of the settlement and the modern buildings that were constructed during the 1930s. 

The constraints and the objective difficulties of everyday painefull life could not weaken their desire for life. The residents organized the spaces, dealt with the land, loved, married, gave birth to children, which gives the impression of a well organized village, the ruins of which are visited during the summer by thousands of tourists with boats starting from Agios Nikolaos, Elounda or Plaka, while efforts are made to enter the island to the cultural heritage list of UNESCO. 

The island bathed in with the summer sun does not indicate anything of its turbulent history and the human suffering that happened here since 1957. 

Driving to Plaka, where we took the boat to Spinalonga, we had a great view of the island, which must have taken this name due to its shape, which resembles a long spine (spina = thorn, Long = long). When we arrived at Spinalonga, we climbed to the highest point and overlooked at the picturesque fishing village of Plaka on the opposite. 

Really, how different thoughts and feelings we had that beautiful sunny summer day, watching the sea and land of those people who gazed in pain, knowing that maybe they would never again return, serene, beautiful and calm, was for them an insurmountable obstacle, a "boundary" between them and their old lives...