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. 

Mykonos definitely felt like the college party island.

The popular beaches are Paradise and (f paradise isn’t enough for you, you can go on t0) Super Paradise.  We felt we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to get two tickets to paradise (the boys were free), so we took a boat from Ornos to Paradise.  The beach included a nude section which we somehow ended up next to (coincidentally!).  We didn’t mind the nudity (the boys just said to us: “Mom, Dad, those people are naked!”) but the conversation from the college boys was quite entertaining.   “Dude, It’s like seeing your mom naked!”  So, paradise wasn’t perfect but as we waited for the boat back the partying at the clubs started so the boys and I had our own dance party on the beach.  (We returned to the beach area where the boat to take us back to Ornos was to be, and looked up at the sign, which said, last boat to Ornos, 5:30, and looked at our watch, 5:12.  The guy looks at us, I say Ornos, and he says, um, that left two minutes ago, we could see it going around the bend.  I point to the sign, and he shakes his head, saying I know, I know, they always come at the wrong time.  Then he  was great, he made four or give calls on radio and cell phone, and arrranged for us to take another boat, to have that boat go the extra distance to make sure we got back.  Then he walked over to the bar, got a magic marker, stood up on his chair, crossed out Ornos 5:30, and wrote in Ornos, 5:10.   It gave us a little taste of why, on the T shirt of the staffing of Heaven and hell, the Germans organize everything in Heaven, and the Greeks organize everything in Hell.)

One of our days there we went to the archeological museum of Mykonos (our 28th museum of the trip) which was filled almost entirely with reconstructed pots from Delos (Jonathan will write about our terrific visit to Delos).  Nate was in kind of a silly mood so he started dancing around the museum.  I started having flashes of all the slapstick movies we have seen, envisioning Nate knocking one pot into the next and destroying all of them.  I decided we should wait outside until Spencer and Jonathan were done.  The museums here have signs that say “No Flash and No Photographs with the items and people”.  For some reason you are not allowed to take pictures which have people adjacent to the museum collections… we don’t know why?

Mykonos town was fun to explore, the narrow alleyways of white and blue.  We found the boys a nutella crepe and me a new blue bikini.  My last purchase of the trip, really, really (we will see) and definitely worth it.

OK OK So this is Jessica Alba and not me!  I do not look like that after all the Baklava but I still like my new bikini!

We are staying in Fira which sits on top of the island. We walked all along the cobblestone alleyways in Fira with views of the cliffs, the water below and the iconic white and blue buildings.

We rented ATVs and drove to the beach on the other side of the island and towards Oia.  Stopped to look at more views as the sunset began.  We also saw a few sunset weddings going on at the cliffside hotels and restaurants.

Dinner was take out.  Two Euro Gyro pitas a Mythos beer for us and chocolate milk for the boys.  We ate them sitting on a ledge watching the end of the sunset.  The food and view were perfect but we made kind of a mess trying to eat in an akward location.  It was still worth it.  Of course we had banana chocolate ice cream on the way back to the hotel.  Today we had a nice breakfast at the hotel then headed down the steep hill to the dock below.  We then took at nice old fashioned boat over to the volcano.  We hiked the volcano for an hour.  One cool (or should I say hot) moment was when we found a hole that had steam coming out of it. The boys loved putting their hands in and feeling the heat.   Then the boat took us to another spot where there were some volcanic hot springs.  Jonathan and Spencer swam from the boat but Nate and I were not quite up for the swim.  Then our boat took us back to the mainland where we decided to take a donkey ride back up the hill.  The donkey ride was fun but bumpy.  Those donkeys have a mind of their own they go when and where they want.  Ours kept taking us to the very edge of the walkway and it was a steep drop down but of course we were safe.

Then we went back to our ATVs.  I am so embarassed to be driving one around but they are a cheap easy way to get around the island.  Nate and I ride together and Jonathan has Spencer.  Of course Spencer really wants to ride it by himself but we wont let him.  Yesterday as we were riding a boy ran out and threw a ball of pokey plants at us.  I was a little mad but I realized if someone was driving a noisy ATV through my neighborhood I would probably do the same thing.  Today we went to another nice beach.  It was great for the kids.  There was lots of sand and play structures.  We all swam.  When we got back we went to a bar with a view and Jonathan and I drank rose while we watched another beautiful sunset.  The boys complained because they wanted food.  They weren’t awe struck by the sunset like we were.  

Now back at the hotel after another delicious dinner of gyros and greek salad, I am blogging, Jonathan reading, Nate quickly fell asleep and Spencer is reading his new favorite magazine Wired.

Monday: Zeus’ cave

We set off early into the mountains of Crete.  After several days of bright sunshine we have had a few cloudy and slight to rainy days,  so the sky was cloudy and as we drove into the mountains it felt like we were driving up into the clouds. It really did feel like were driving up to the land of the gods.  It was very deserted up there except for a bus load of school children and a million goats running across the road. We got to the entrance of the trail where there was a large run down looking building with TABEPNA spray painted on the front.  That means that it is a taverna (B=V and P=R).  As we started our hike some men drove up to the taverna and started unloading the food for the day including two whole lambs slung over their shoulders.  Along the hike there were beautiful views of the valley below.   After a half an hour we reached the cave where “Zeus was born”.   It was a huge cave on the hill.  We went inside–all by ourselves, no other tourists or attendants, just us.  You could tell there were lots of birds and other animals inside.  It was such a big cave that it wasn’t dark inside and therefore not scary for the boys.  We hiked back down and drove to a nearby town for lunch.  Anogia was a very nice hill side town where I had cheese pies with honey for lunch.  Jonathan had his new favorite davos (hard bread covered with fresh tomato sauce, feta and oregano).  We read about the town and found out that Anogia was one of the villages where the nazis had killed every man in the village during the occupation of Crete.  It was such a horrible story and it made us wonder how the townspeople felt about all the german tourists that come through here.

Tuesday: Plaka and Spinalonga

When we arrived on Crete I found a book in our condo called The Island by Victoria Hislop.  I decided to read it since it was about Crete.  It was a really interesting book about a family in the small town of Plaka and the leper colony on the island across from Plaka called Spinalonga.  This historical novel is about a Cretan family from 1939-2001 dealing with leperosy, the war and more.  I enjoyed reading it and was really intrigued by the story of the leper colony on Spinalonga which was the last leper colony in Europe and was evacuated in 1957.  So Tuesday we drove to Plaka a very small and beautiful beach town.  We ate a very nice seafood lunch at a small taverna called Maria’s.  Then we took the boat to Spinalonga.  The small island has many layers of history.  Once a venetian fortress, a Turkish settlement, a leper colony and now a tourist attraction.  The island was fun to explore.  There were lots of ruins but also relatively new buildings that were built by the lepers.  My understanding from the book was that the leper colony was a strong community that was a real village with a market and a baker, etc..  I really enjoyed seeing the island after reading the book

Saturday, almost a week ago now, we had our “Day of Six Modes of Transportation!”  That morning we left our Venice apartment at about 8:30, and walked with our bags about half a kilometer to our vaporetto bus-boat stop at S. Pietro, and took the boat for 40 minutes to the Venice train station.   We then took a 9:50 train to Milan, and after an hour or two at the open market adjacent to the train station, we took a bus from the train station to the Milan airport.   From Milan, we flew to Athens, and then on to Heraklion, the main city here on Crete, arriving Heraklion at about 11:30 pm.   We then rented a car, and drove 40 minutes, getting a little lost, from Heraklion to our little village of Fodele, population 600.   It was almost 1 in the morning when we parked our car in the center of the village, and I found a flashlight and wandered through the park-playground adjacent to the parking area and across a river, searching for the promised little path that would lead us to our townhouse, and finding it after about a 15 minute hunt.

Our townhouse is two stories with a roof-deck, in a little development called Mandarin Grove, all occupied by English residents and tourists.   It is not on any street, but surrounded by orange groves, you can only get here by walking up the path from the village.   Next to us are Helen and Ken, who manage things here, and they have been super friendly.  They share their DVDs with us, and it is great– Helen manages a little touristy shop in the village, and introduces us to people.   Here at Mandarin Grove there is also a small, pleasant but unheated, swimming pool, and we often eat our meals by the pool.

The village just has one main street, and another side street leading up to the El Greco birthplace and museum. Tuesday we walked up the road to the site, and were excited to learn even more about El Greco watching a video about his life.   It explained that he was born here in Fodele, then lived in Venice, then Rome, and finally most of his maturity in Toledo, Spain– and as they explained all this, Nate exclaimed– hey, we have been to all these places!   

The street is pedestrian friendly except for the occasional teenagers, who look like they are 14, who race through in pickup truck or ATV.   Lining the street are tourist shops, selling lace and macrame items, and cafes– we have settled into be regulars already at Cafe Domenico (picture left), run by Smoothy George.  It is a little place with tables over the river, and at least once a day we take a

 meal there at the same table, and enjoy wonderful homecooked greek food and wine or beer, never paying more than 30 euros a meal.   We have had Cretan salads and mousakka and gyros and omelettes and it is all wonderful.   Smoothy George always come over and kisses Carman twice, or more(!), on the cheek, and tells us about his years working for the US Air Force, and about his wife Eva whom he married out of high school and makes the food in the kitchen while he entertains in front.   He always gives us freebies and extras, and it is pretty fun.  

The village is in a little canyon, surrounded by beautiful hills, and there are nature paths and hikes up the river and out of the canyon.  Two or three kilometers down the road is the beach, which is a top Cretan beach, and is wonderful. We take some of the freely available umbrellas and lounge chairs, sometimes lunch at the adjacent restaurant, and swim, read, and sand castle build to our heart’s content.    One day I rented a little sunfish and sailed for an hour. 

So far, after six days here, we have only done one real outing, spending Wednesday morning at the famous ruins of Knossos, the Minoan capital that is so renowned for its high living in the second millennium BC, roughly 1800 to 1400 BC.    This is the palace of the legendary Labyrinth, and a place of luxury and grandeur previously unknown, including flush toilets. We toured for about two hours, and thought it was hot, we really enjoyed it.  

2. We enjoyed very much the Academy Art museum, which we got to early and had the run of, all to ourselves.  Particularly favorite was the famous giorgione painting, the Tempest, which we took a long time to admire and puzzle over.  Making it fun for me (Jonathan) was that the painting was a centerpiece of the novel I was reading that same week, which had many scenes in Venice, a wonderful novel I highly recommend, called A Soldier of the Great War by Helprin.

3. A third favorite was our daily visits, each afternoon, to the Biennial Gardens, at the southeast tip of Venice, which beautiful views, lovely grass and trees, and where the boys made rafts every day to float in the canals, and where Spencer and I played a bunch of soccer. 

4. We were proud of ourselves for really mastering the use of the vaporettos for public transportation, the boat-buses.  We took them on four different days, and got skillful at reading the schedule and map, and getting on and off here and there– Spencer particularly got obsessed with making sense of the schedule and map.  And such fun– that we can use boats as buses!  One day, Thursday, we took five vaporetto rides, including a night-time ride down the grand canal seeing into the palaces lit up inside, and enjoying a full-moon.

5.  In fact, we were able to enjoy all four forms of transportation: vaporetto, gondola, water taxi, and traghetto.   The last is the gondola that takes you directly across the grand canal, standing up, for only 50cents, for about a two minute ride.   When you don’t have a bridge nearby, you just jump onto a traghetto.  I generally dislike motorboats, but water taxis are so sleek, such wonderful wooden boats, in which you can sit or stand in the back and enjoy the ride, living large almost like in a James Bond movie, that you have to love the water taxis.   Usually they cost 60-80 euros, but we got to ride one for 30 minutes for free, taking advantage of the offer the glass factory offered in Murano to taxi you there for free if you sat through their glass show.   Really great.  And then the gondola ride, which we did Friday evening, Spencer’s birthday, at twilight and under a full moon.   You know, it is so hokey, the touristy gondola ride, but it was really great fun, we really enjoyed it, gliding through canals, under the bridge of sighs, and back into areas where there are no alleys to walk, sliding past other gondolas going the other direction.  

6. Finally, we really enjoyed our little neck of the woods, in the Castello district, and Via Garibaldi.It was so wonderful that the boys could wander and explore, with our having NO fear of cars and traffic, and they could just run and discover.  Several times Spencer went off, alone or with Nate, with a map, and wearing his watch he knew he had to be back in 30 minutes, and he or they would just go, and we felt entirely comfortable.   Carman and I also found a favorite spot, a wine bar with fun tables out on the “street” of Via Garibaldi, and nearly every evening we enjoyed prosecco or Venetian spritzers, for just one or two euros each, while they bar played U2, and the boys ran off to get gelato or pastries or just explore.  

Venice proved to be a real triumph for us– I had feared we only were doing it because it was a “must-see”, and that we’d be disappointed, and that it wouldn’t live up, but it completely did, it was really great.

Let’s see, a recap.  Saturday we spent a terrific day walking the Trastevere neighborhood and Gianicolo park.  The Trastever  is about a mile south of us down the Tiber, and is a wonderful medieval feeling neighborhood.   We walked to it via Campo Fiori, and then across the pedestrian bridge into the area, and then up Via Garibaldi, up the hill to the big parks with views across the river to the city.   I was thrilled to see Brahmante’s Tempietto, picture, which I had studied in college as a gem of the Rennaissance.    Then we walked north through the park, and then down the hill and back into the neighborhood.  After a break, we visited the 4th century church that is here, Santa Maria de Trastevere, and let me say that again, this was a fourth century church, certainly the oldest church any of us had ever been in (15 centuries old, compared to the church where I grew up, which is the oldest in the US, which is four centuries old).  The mosaics were fabulous, and we really loved this historic church.  We then went into a very authentic, neighborhood pizzeria and got some wonderful pizza to take home.  The only down part of our time in Trastevere was my disappointing recognition that we should have taken an apartment here, in the Trastevere neighborhood, rather than in the St Peter’s neighborhood where we are.

Sunday we took the train out to the beach home of the Mazza family whom Carman had met and stayed with in Rome back in 1995, and they were incredibly nice.    We went to the beach for an hour and the boys made sand castles and Nate got soaking wet, as always; Spencer rode bikes for an hour with the 8yrd old boy Claudio; we sat and had a Sunday feast that they served us of Roman style spaghetti and meatballs.  It was so nice, and we hope to continue in future years our relationship with this family.    When we got back home, Spencer and Nate struck up a friendship with the neighborhood kids, who came over to our fence and engaged them– first they played on DS games together, linking them up and playing each other’s game for a while, and then running around playing Hide and Seek Tag for an hour in the streets around our little house– it was so fun to see them have such friendly play with peers.

Monday– yesterday, we took it easy in the morning, and then went out on my quest to see 5 churches.  We failed.   We took the bus to Piazza Venezia, where Mussolini spoke to the crowds, and then walked up the steps to the Campodoglio, Michealeangelo’s fabulous square atop Capitol hill.  We saw the overlook of the Forum, and walked up to the top of the steps of the horrible wedding cake monument to Vittor Emmanuel, and saw the largest equestrian statue in the world there.

Then it was into our first church, atop the hill there, but it was closed.  So we walked down and over to the second church, St. Peter in Chains, and were very happy to see Michaelangelo’s incredible Moses statue there.   We stood and looked at in awe, and also walked down the steps to see the relics here, yes, the chains of St. Peter.   Then it was onto Santa Maria Maggiore, which is a fifth century church, and also has awesome mosaic patterns in the floor, geometric and colorful and vaguely reminiscent of the mosaics we loved so much in Spain.

In Santa Maria Maggiore we also were overwhelmed by the relic there, down the steps, of the the splinters of wood from the crib of Jesus.

Too tired for anymore churches, and beaten down by the rain, we headed into a shoe shop, found some new shoes, and then were frustrated to find that we didn’t have enough cash and contrary to the sign in front, they didn’t take credit cards.  Urgh.. We then took the bus back home, and Spencer and I made soup.  Oh, I should have said, in the morning, Monday morning, we went to the local market a couple blocks from us, and Spencer and Nate went on a mission to pick and buy with their own money the ingredients for a soup they would make for us.   They carefully compared prices and purchased potatoes, zuchinni, garlic, meat, and curry powder.   Then, after our outing, we carefully cut everything, sauteed the veggies, stuck them in a pot with water, added the curry, and it was, I swear, one of the tastiest soups ever.  The rain outside, and the homemade quality, obviously all helped.

Today, we decided to go to South Rome, to see the Museum of Roman Civilization, which also has a Planetarium and Astronomy Center.  It was a hundred minute trip on a long bus and long, crowded subway, and then a walk of five blocks in the rain, so I got pretty mad when they said the planetarium and astronomy center was closed to the public today, just for school groups.   Arghhh.  I fought and whined and complained, but to no avail.  But the museum was fun, it was a huge place with room after room of models of ancient Roman cities and buildings and weapons and maps of wars and busts of emporers, and the boys were pretty into it, especially all the siege towers and weaponry they had.  The architecture of the museum is a bit fascist, and it is certainly dedicated to the glory that was Rome, but it was quite engaging.   Its highlight is an enormous, huge, floor model, the size of a basketball court almost, of ancient Rome, with every building and street perfectly visible.  On the way back we also stopped quickly at the Pyramide of Rome, an imitation Roman pyramid built in the time of Antony and Cleopatra.  Then another long bus trip, in the rain, back here.

We are doing pretty well, but struggling a bit with sightseeing fatigue, and the boys sometimes get cranky when they have only each other to play with.   They really miss their friends a lot, and talk and think about them quite a bit.  We were also sad yesterday to read on facebook that a pretty good friend Jim Manning, the Dad of Nate’s best friend in Preschool, died on Sunday, from a cancer he had been battling for two years.   Jim’s kids are now 7 and 3.   A tragedy.  Our sadness at his passing also makes us recognize yet again how fortunate we are as a family to be so healthy and have this amazing time together.