Across the Aegean - Naxos Town

Getting to Naxos proved to be a low point of the trip for me for the stupidest of reasons. I packed up a half-finished bottle of wine to take with me and stuck in my tote bag and by the time I had boarded the bus to the port, I discovered it had broken and begun to saturate much of what was in the bag. The fleece jacket that I had planned to wear on the cold ferry ride was now soaked with cheap Santorini white wine as was the sling bag from Indonesia that I used to carry my stuff around in every day. I quickly got the bottle off the bus and isolated the jacket and the bag. What I didn’t realize until I got to the port was that my ipod was in the bag (a freakish mistake – I never usually kept it there) and after soaking in wine inside and out, the battery went haywire and burnt itself out. Despite keeping it in rice for the last few days, it has never come back on although the screen has cleared. What I didn’t realize until I went to pack up today to go to Paros is that my hiking sandals were also in the bag and I must have tossed them quickly out on the bus and they never got back into my luggage. What an expensive and stupid disaster! I am trying to take it in stride but can’t stop kicking myself for it.

The ferry left an hour and a half late – there were hundreds of people waiting to get on board because it went on to a few other islands and then to Piraeus, the port of Athens. However once we were all aboard we barely filled the spacious capacity of what proved to be a fairly elegant boat, with two escalators up to the main floor and cabins full of airplane style seats as well as cafes and lounges. It was all quite orderly and organized, including the loading of cars, motorcycles, motor homes and 16 wheeler semis hauling full loads. Because the seas were incredibly rough, I was well dosed up with Dramamine and stayed on the back deck out of the wind (with all the smokers, unfortunately) and did not get sick at all, even when I finally gave in to the chill and went inside.

Pension Sofi

The gangplank was already lowered before the ferry stopped at Naxos, where it barely stayed 10 minutes, just long enough to let off the scant 25 passengers and one motorcycle that were disembarking and to take on a few. We immediately felt the quietness of this island in comparison to Santorini. We were whisked away to our little guesthouse, Pension Sofi. Although exhausted, we walked back down to the port in the cold and whipping wind to where there are a few dozen restaurants and chose the one with a flaming woodstove and fresh fish on ice waiting to be grilled.

We knew that it was supposed to be windy and rainy on Monday but when on vacation in a place that is considered a tropical vacation paradise, one tends to be delusional about the weather, even if it is April. So although waking up to a very cold and gray day for exploring Naxos town did not fit our expectations, we bundled up and did it anyway. And felt completely rewarded for doing so, beginning with the Sanctuary of Apollo, the ancient marble portal a hill outside of town. A simple and dramatic Greek ruin, it is the symbol of Naxos and does strike some awe.

As always, Naxos Hora (or Old Town) was nothing at all as expected. Despite compelling photos of ancient buildings and narrow streets, it seems impossible to pictorially convey the labyrinth that these ancient port cities are, a warren of winding ways, homes built upon homes built over arched tunnels over twisting avenues that come together in impossible angles. From any direction, steep steps will eventually lead you to the Venetian castle perched at the summit, overlooking the port from its well-positioned vantage point designed to watch for pirates and marauders. We got a tour of the castle and the excavated ruins below it from a man who was 13^th generation descendant of the family that had inhabited it in the early 1700s and he still made his home there. The upstairs was filled with the usual European antiquities, but the basement was fabulously interesting with old Greek kitchen and mill tools and a theater where concerts are held on the weekends. At the end of the quite private tour, we got to try Citron, (pronounced Kit-rone) the local spirit made from lemons which was quite alcoholic and delicious.

Although filled with many shops and restaurants (more than half of which are not open yet), people do live in the Hora and there are small grocery stores and other necessities as well as a fabulous old-fashioned bakery. Despite the feeling of being lost, eventually every pathway will spill out on to the main port avenue, a wide street lined with restaurants, banks, etc. that frames the harbor full of boats and the ferry dock.

As I write this a few days later, after a full day of driving around a different island, Paros, I can barely remember what we did on Naxos on the gray day. Ate seafood soup for lunch that brought back warmth and strength, discovered that we could manage to go Amorgos at this time of year, the ferries only ran at midnight and every other night went to a different port so that we would have to stay 5 days to come back. This meant a sea change (literally!) in plans and while at the Blue Star Ferry office looking at the schedule, Paros, only an hour away and visible across the channel, seemed like an easy alternative, although we had not researched it at all. Within a few hours I had booked a place via Skype, we bought tickets and we arranged to leave our big luggage at Pension Sofi while we went.

In the cold and rainy night, we wandered back up into the old town and ate at a cozy Italian restaurant with excellent wine and nouveau food. By the next morning the sky cleared out and we finally a perfect Cycladean day with a clear blue sky to complement the Aegean Sea. We walked to a beach and hung out for several hours; everywhere folks were doing their spring cleaning and fix-up - the sounds of hammering, vacuuming and sandblasting, the smell of white wash and the sight of people preparing for the upcoming tourist season. We are definitely a few weeks ahead of the curve in the Greek islands, which has its good and bad sides – the good being that it is virtually crowd-less, the bad being that many places are not open yet. I am okay with this – I know I would not be happy here when the place is wall-to-wall vacationers.

The highlight of the day (and maybe this whole part of the trip) was catching the sunset of a lifetime framed by the Sanctuary of Apollo. Who was it that said the sun never sets!