If you want to hike the Gorge of Samaria on the Greek island of Crete, you might like to know you'll have someone there who will look out for you.

There is this old shepherd there who knows of course every guide and usually he has some cheese and if you know him well he can bring some other stuff out as well.

Coming up, a pair of Greek travel experts tell us how traditions remained important on Crete, where you can still look at frescoes that are 4,000 years old.

Cruising in Alaska, the attractions, the scenery and the wildlife.

You've got the water, you've got the green islands, you've got the snow cap peaks, and then you've got the wildlife, you've got whales, you've got brown bears, you've got black bears, you've got wolves.

Travel writer Mark Adams reports on how he used the state ferry system to retrace the historic route of the 1899 Haram in expedition.

And a Dutch ecologist explains how life is evolving around us a lot faster than he might expect.

We don't see evolution as something that you can observe in your backyard but you can and it goes fast and it happens everywhere.

It's all in the hour ahead on Travel with Rick Steves.

Hey I'm Rick Steves. In my latest book for the love of Europe you can savour Europe's most exciting experiences and sights through a hundred of my favorite travel stories.

Imagine hanging from an alpine ridge, dancing at a Turkish circumcision party and swinging with a bell ringer in a medieval church fire.

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You could call it the first luxury cruise to Alaska and it had an amazing guest list.

Railroad magnet Edward Hariman invited John Muir, George Bird Grinnell, William Doll and other leading scientists, artists and thinkers of his day to sail with him into the often uncharted waters of Alaska in 1899.

He wanted it to be a sort of floating university to explore the wilderness that America had purchased just a few decades earlier.

Its passengers would provide the spark that got America serious about conservation.

Travel writer Mark Adams retraced their journey on the much humbler state ferry system to see what Alaska's natural history and its people had to teach him today.

He tells us what he found in just a bit on today's travel with Rick Steves.

And Dutch scientist Menos Gilthaus explains how urban ecologists in cities around the world have been noticing evolutionary forces at work in local animals and plants right before our eyes.

He'll tell us where you can witness this too a little later in the hour.

Let's start today's show with a look at what you can find when you visit the largest of the Greek islands, Crete.

It's where the earliest advanced civilizations in Europe were found more than 4,000 years ago.

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