Naxos– Wonderful

Hello from wonderful Naxos, an island in the Cyclades, south of Mykonos, north of Santorini, just East of Paros.  Naxos is the biggest Cyclades island, and was, briefly, in the 6th and 7th centuries BCE, the leading island power in the Aegean.   It is also, we now know, renowned for its marble, and for its Cycladic civilization in the third millennium BCE, long before, for instance, Minoan Crete and Knossos, a time during which  the Naxians produced their incredible Cycladic sculptures.

We are here for five nights, and we think (jonathan here) this is the best.   It is so wonderful here.  We are staying at a small, family run resort, about 40 rooms, about 25 meters from the prime resort beach here on Naxos, St. George’s beach.   the resort is really friendly, and serves a nice buffet breakfast every morning, and the boys love the pool here– but we have also had a lot of fun on the beach, swimming and snorkeling, playing paddleball (hard paddles, little balls).  Carman played volleyball for a while with a big group of Germans, (the hotel here, and the beach, is very much German dominated), and we even rented for an hour something I had never seen before, one of those plastic boats for four that you pedal with your feet, but with on top of it a slide, which you climb up 5 steps to the top of, and then slide down into the water.  They look a bit ungainly, and I was skeptical, but Spencer pleaded with us to do it, and you know what, it was really fun, pedling around the bay and sliding into the water.

Hora, or Naxos-town, the main town on the island, is about a 15 minute walk from here, along a beach boardwalk, and it is a lovely town, with a hilltop castle which has been built upon for centuries, and is now dominated by Venetian empire era buildings and castles.   Right at the port, facing outwards on a little adjacent island easily accessible from Hora, is the remains of the Temple of Apollo here from the sixth century, all that is left is one marble gateway, which looms over the town and is eerie and beautiful, simple and elegant, striking at sunset.    It is on all the tourist items here, a real icon/logo for the island.   The first full day we were here we walked out there and all around– really like it.

The second day here, we mostly spent at the beach and pool, but that evening, Sunday, Carman and I got a babysitter from the hotel (!!), and went into town, to the Venetian Castle, to attend a Naxos music and dance concert there, on a patio overlooking the harbor and out to the west, perfect for Sunset. It was such a nice event; the MC spoke at length in a very charming way about the 3,000+ year old tradition of song and dance on Naxos; he told us about all the wines and liquers they make here, and then they provided generously (unlimited) samples.   A nice night.  The music and dancers performed for an hour, and then invited everyone there to come and dance with them, and we danced Naxian style to end the evening!

Monday we had an amazing day, incredible, one of the biggest and best days of our trip.  We had a little rental car, and we set out to explore the island.   Usually on this trip, when we set out in a car for somewhere, we have a pretty precise itinerary, but we really were good about this day, having goals for things we wanted to see but also time and willingness to explore and see what we see.   First, we drove up about 30 minutes into the hills and to the south, and after a lot of twists and turns, arrived at the temple of Demeter, up in a plateau like valley filled with farms and fields. The temple is a gorgeous site, and we walked all around, all by ourself, and really enjoyed it.   We then went to the museum, which was closed for Monday, but we could peek in all the windows and see most of it.  The lizards here are enormous.

After the temple, we drove past a pottery workshop that had been recommended to us by a pair of Villanova professors we met awaiting the ferry, and the shop completely took us.  It was huge, we were alone, and the artist was charming.    We bought a couple beautiful cycladic pieces, a Christmas ornament, a plate, and the boys got water whistles that sound like trilling birds, and also a really funny cup with a hole in the center that doesnt’ drain, until it does— kind of hard to describe, we’ll have to show you.    The piece I got that I hope makes it home in one piece is a cycladic sculpture thinker, for my new desk in Tucson.

Then it was off to drive quickly through Halki, a nice interior village, and up to Filoti, a village of about 500 homes which is on a ridge facing the highest (about 1000m) mountain here, Mt. Zas.   We had lunch at a village taverna here, and it was great.   We explored the village, and kept looking across a little canyon to a narrow, pointy hilltop which rose maybe 700 feet from the canyon to a little tip, atop which was a little tiny chapel.  Well, Spencer and I had the bug, and we had to get to it, so we drove around to the other side, and hiked up about 35 minutes to see it, and it was spectacular. Then we drove around to another trailhead on Mt. Zas, and hiked another 30 minutes toward (but not to) the top and to a cave there; Mt. Zas is named for Zeus, who was raised here on Naxos, having been born on Mt. Ida on Crete.  We are now talking a lot about how we are tracking Zeus’ life, from birth on Crete (we went to that cave), to here his boyhood on Naxos– and now we are headed for Olympus.

But this day was not over yet!  We drove then up, up, up along a beautiful ridgeline highway and over the top to a slightly bigger village of Ampetheiros, which promotes itself by its five museums!  Well, the Archeological Museum was closed, but we went to all four other museums (each being only about a single room); Natural History, Geology, Fine Arts, and Folklore.  They were small but charmining, and we enjoyed them before having an ice cream.

Then, it was off again, down to Appollonus, a lovely small fishing village on the northeast coast and home of the famous kouros here, which we hiked up about 300m to find.  This is an enormous statue in marble, the size of a small bus, of either Apollo or Dionysus (the experts disagree), which was carved out of a marble quarry here intended for the Temple of Apollo in Delos.  Unfortunately, they then found that it was too big to be moved!   And so here on Naxos it lies, 2600 years later, still in the marble quarry.  It was really fun, we climbed all over it. This picture is a bit misleading, because you really can’t get the scale from it– for a little bit of help, look at the foot on the bottom right of the picture– when I stood next to the foot, the toes were higher than my head!

We then drove back to Hora through the center of the island, and, coming around one corner way up in the hills, you are suddenly presented with an enormous mountain of marble being quarried– it is a stunning site.   It is weirdly beautiful but also disturbing, knowing that they are literally dismantling this mountain piece by piece; as you drive down the hill you pass by a bunch of marble cutting facilities, with marble slabs stacked up.   We also stopped at one spot to admire the clay pipes of an aquaduct built here in the sixth century, BC.    We got back to the hotel about 630 after our nine hour day, and ordered pizza, which tasted great.

Yesterday we had another nice day, visiting Naxos’ renowned Archeological Museum, in Hora.   The museum was really great, one of our very favorites of the trip (we are up to 38 now!).  What is best are all the many cycladic sculptures, which you can really enjoy and marvel at for long times.   They are so fascinating, so old (4500 years old), and so stranglely ancient yet modern too– they are said to have inspired Brancusi and other modernist sculptors. There was a big group of Dartmouth students in the museum, and we had fun talking with them, comparing notes about our Greek travels.  Then last night, we went back into Hora for dinner on the waterfront, and selected a terrific place where they were grilling over hot coals the octupus and squid which were hanging, fresh, over a rail in front.  Carman had a fabulous plate of coal-grilled fresh fish and squid, and I had something I had never had before, but loved, a stuffed (cheese and peppers and tomatoes), grilled squid. 

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