Adventures in Greece Part 3 – Naxos and Back

As the ferry began to dock in the port at Naxos, we made our way down the series of steel stairs to the disembarkation platform. We walked out into what was now scorching sunshine and took in the vista of the Sanctuary of Apollo on a hillock to the left, the castle and old town straight ahead and the beaches, sweeping off into the distance to the right. But before any of that, there was a huge hubbub of people coming to meet loved ones and friends, pension owners coming to greet those without accommodation with offers, and traders, here to collect things brought over from the mainland. The day before we left Athens, I’d received an email from Stavros – the proprieter of our hotel – offering to come and meet us at the port, so we looked out for signs for “Pension Irene”. We couldn’t see him anywhere. We found some space to one side of the throng and put our bags down for a moment. About to take out my phone to call him, I suddenly spotted a very neat feature of the harbour – a WiFi enabled covered area, with touchscreens that you could use to find the addresses, phone numbers and photos of the huge range of accommodation on the island. Not only that, you could make a free skype call from the booth. I was seriously impressed. I called through to Stavros and he answered quickly, asking where I was. I explained that I was in the Skype booth and he was, naturally, 2 metres behind me. I turned, walked over and shook his hand, introducing myself and Ania. We walked over to his mini van and dumped our bags on the rows of seats at the back. We hopped in and sat down. We moved perhaps 5 metres before he turned to us and said “you may as well walk. In this traffic, it could take an hour to drive to the hotel. I’ll bring your things to you later.” He gave us directions and a leaflet, complete with a map and off we went. We walked through a gap in the gleaming white buildings and along a winding road in the direction he had pointed us. Here, on the map, there were 2 roads. In reality there were 4. It was about to get a bit sketchy.

We consulted the map and, eventually, agreed on a route. Readers of previous posts to this blog will know that this was the wrong direction. It did however, allow us to get a good look at this side of the island. We found the football stadium (not premier league standard) and the general hospital, which looked like a not particularly impressive shed and made a mental note to avoid injury and illness at all costs, while here. We also saw countless classic Greek island picture postcard views, like this:

After stopping in a couple of shops and asking for directions with our quite misleading map, we found our hotel’s sister hotel and then were driven around to our home for the next 3 days by the kindly owner, who found our confusion quite amusing. As soon as we arrived, I left Ania to organise herself in the room and went off to pay for our stay. Immediately after I had, the hotel owner’s mother came after me with some cold ice creams for Ania and I. It was a really nice touch and we ate them right away, after so long out in the sun trying to find the place.

After we had gathered our thoughts and taken the weight off of our feet for a while, we decided to go out and explore the local area. Our hotel was on a road which backed straight onto St George beach. This is the second most beautiful on the island, according to Trip Advisor, so we decided to go and take a look while we still had the afternoon sun. It was quite busy, with a variety of watersports and sunbathers covering the soft sand, in front of a line of fairly low-key bars and restaurants, creating a relaxing, welcoming atmosphere.

From here, we had already decided we would walk back into the town and across the port to the “Portare” – the gate of the Sanctuary of Apollo, which was said to be wonderful at sunset. So we walked back along the beach towards the old city. On the way we saw some interesting sights, starting with this strange fellow.

After this, we walked along a wide stretch of bars and cafés, brimming with mainly Greek tourists enjoying beers or freddos and chatting with their family and friends in front of the harbour, still crammed full of active fishing boats, the fishermen hanging up octopi to dry and carrying bulging nets of fish to the awaiting restaurants. We continued past the port and on to the stretch of land where the Portare was. Before you arrive at the Portare itself, you have to walk across a thin strip of land at the edge of the port. You can get right down by the rocks at the edge of the water and there is an ancient statue of someone. Sadly, there’s not much of its face left intact, so you can only try to identify it by virtue of its boobs. I had no idea.

After this and walking past several bathers enjoying the water, you get up close to the great doorway and see what an impressive sight it is, as is the view back to the town and the port. We spent a good hour sitting on the rocks, watching the sea crashing in and the boats coming and going, as the sun sank lower and lower toward the horizon.

From here, it was time to finally grab something to eat, as we were starving, so we stopped off at a relaxed little pizzeria on the harbour’s edge and ate pizza and drank Mythos as the sun went down. It was a great first afternoon and evening on the island.

The next day began late, after a breakfast of pastries and coffee in bed (I went to the cafe at the end of the road, like a true gentleman). After this, we decided it was time to check out the best beach – again, according to trip advisor – on the island. So off we set on the bus journey, 15 minutes or so, through Saint Anne’s beach, Paradiso beach to Plaka. As soon as we arrived we could see that it was, indeed, more beautiful than the others. Finer sand, more space, calmer sea, it was a beautiful place for us to relax.

We claimed a spot, got out the suncream and got on with the business of sunbaking (thank you Australian students for this wonderful term!). We alternated between sitting, some light swimming and the obligatory burial of the girlfriend in the sand. She kept smiling and didn’t kill me afterwards, so it must have been fine.

After a few hours of mucking about there, we were a little peckish, so we walked up to a nice little café opposite the beach and ate some Greek salads with feta and Naxian sour cheeses. Both were superb and washed down with a bottle of coke. After we ate, we decided to explore a little further down the beach, where it was a bit quieter. So we did just that. We found a beautiful spot and sat down on our towels. Just at that moment, Ania gave me a sideways glance and smirk crossed her face as she said “can you see that?”. She was referring to the naked man to our right. This part of the beach was a nude area. Gripped at first by a wave of my Britishness and almost gesturing to go back down to where we were previously, I took a hold of myself (not literally) and decided we should take a “when in Rome” approach. So we stripped off and made sure everything was suitably protected from the sun and, pretty soon, realised that there was less gawping here, than there had been in the bikinis and shorts area. It was all quite comfortable. So we spent an enjoyable time in our first nudist experience and, after a few more hours of bronzing, dressed and headed back to find a bus. It was at this stage that I remembered I had not really put any sunblock on the tops of my feet. This in a place where the sun had been blazing down all day long at temperatures of around 38 degrees. Already I could feel the skin tightening and it was only going to get worse. Nevertheless, I got on the bus smiling from a day well spent.

The next morning, I realised that my feet were in fact like 2 giant red steaks. I was sure they would drop off at any moment, at which point I would have to sell them to a restaurant and spend the rest of my life hopping around on my ankle ends. This was not something I was looking forward to.

When I woke up the next day though, it turned out that I had been exaggerating, which is most out of character for me. But cheerfully, my feet were burned and suffering a bit, but not beyond repair. As Naxos is an island with an awful lot of beach and not an awful lot of anything else, and our plans for these 3 days revolved relaxation together, we went to the beach. This time St George beach, opposite our hotel. I worked out an ingenious way of protecting my burnt feet from getting worse:

I’m sure I looked positively hilarious to all passers by, or like I had some kind of utterly unfathomable form of OCD, but the important thing was I didn’t burn and began to feel better.

The following day though, I really didn’t feel like spending time sunbathing. 2 days was quite enough for me, so I picked up my camera and did some climbing on the rocks, while Ania stretched out on a secluded stretch of beach. We only had 5 hours until our boat was due to leave, but I still managed to see some terrific sights.

After all this wandering, there was only time for a quick souvlaki back at the Relax restaurant and an ice cream in the shade before we got back on the boat. This time, rather than the “every man for himself” experience we’d had on the way to Naxos, we’d been forced to pay an extra 3 euros for airline seats, due to a lack of availability of economy seats. When we found our seats, we wondered why the premium was so small. Row after row of lazy-boy-like faux leather armchairs, fully reclinable and with deck windows, this was going to be a much more comfortable journey.

This was just as well, as when we arrived back into the port of Piraeus at 11:30, we had been unable to rebook our fabulous hotel from our first stay there. No, we had had to book another, similarly rated hotel, on the other side of the marina. ‘How different could it be?’ we thought, as we crossed the road and began to walk slightly uphill, along the marina walk. We took a left and then a right onto the street where our hotel was located and there, before us were two not-particularly-upmarket looking prostitutes. Fortunately, you could smell their perfume from so far away that it wasn’t hard to avoid them. They walked towards us, as we carried our bags, with fully drunken smiles on their faces. I felt pretty sorry for them, if I’m honest. We found the hotel quickly enough and walked inside. The place seemed ok, and we bundled our things into the lift and went up to our room on the 3rd floor.

While Ania was smoking on the balcony of our room, she noticed a titty bar across the way, which looked as run down and depressed as the hookers in the street. It was a surprise, as it was so close to where we had stayed before, where everything had seemed so pleasant. We decided it didn’t really matter as we were here only to sleep before our flight the next day. In the morning we rose, got breakfast at a nearby store and then jumped on our bus back to the airport. There had been so much to take in, so many things we had seen and experiences we’d had. It was a truly fantastic week and Greece is certainly a place we’d return to. Now though, our minds were already turning to the next adventure.