Naxos Island, Cyclacades, Greece

NAXOS ISLAND, CYCLADES, GREECE

Naxos was the perfect place to start my Island Hopping adventure, I just wish I would have been a bit more diligent with updating the blog so I don’t forget anyhting. I am currently on Island 3, don’t worry I plan on recapping all of them, but the internet has been really spotty here so I haven’t been able to do much! So, let’s talk Naxos!

Day 1:

The ferry landed (OK, since they never take-off they don’t land… what exactly do they do, ported???) in Naxos around 12:30. Immediately after checking into my hotel – and having some of the homade wine from “papi”, the owners grandfather I head off  on the days adventure. I was told St. George beach was very nice and the closest to port (which is where my hotel was) so off I went…

I had to rent a chair at the beach since I was so excited to be on a beach that I failed to think about buying a towel, or a beach mat, or well anyhting for that matter... Although I did pick up some sunscrean - gotta perfect the tan! To get a beach chair you had to buy a drink so I figured what better time than now to try out a new Greek Beer - let's just say this was my first and last fix!

A view from my lounger of St George Beach. The water was AMAZINGLY blue and the sand smooth and white, but it reminded of of Mexico... NOt what I came to greece for. It was a busy, busy beach with bars  and umbrellas everyhwere. Not much quiet time in this place. I wasnt overly thrilled with it, but knew that there were some more options elsewhere, ust none within waking distance. After describing my "problem" (ha, huge problem, poor poor me!) to a local they told em to rent a scotter and check out the other beaches the next day. Now this sounded liek a great plan, until you think of me and scooter...

Pizza break for dinner, delivered to the beach, I didnt want to leave so it worked. Also two more attempts at greek beer, even the Organic stuff, EPIC FAIL! Although the pizza was darn tasty!

Example of how clear the water was... Visibility was about 20M... 60ft! Notice toe-nail color, this will come up later :)



View of St George Beach



Sunset of St George Beach... I did not want to leave!

Day 2

Begin the adventures of my ATV (4x4). I decided I did not want to be stuck with St George beach (souch an awful predicament to be in!), so after researching that it was nearly impossible to get lost on the 4 roads on the island, and figuring how much damage can I do to myself on something with 4 wheels (HA, think rental car = hawaii!)  I rented a ATV for the remaining 2 days!




If I ever owned a house on a greek island, this is exactly what I would want it to look like, mabe a few more bogavilla (I think thats what it is??) flowing over the walls, probably purple!




Adorbly cute hotel on adoribly cute beach - for anyone intrested  (lynnae...) the name of the hotel is Lianos Village, It just reminded me of what I pictured a Greek Island to be!



Looking down on my next stop - Agios Propokis



My beach for the day - Agios Propokis, quieter than St George, with the MOST AMAZING water I have EVER seen (even now on Island 3, I have to give the water award to Naxos!)

Looking the other direction,  planted myself about 1/3 of the way down the beach.



The attempt of this picture is to show how blue the water is, it matched my electric blue toe-nail polish!



My campng place for the day... Notice, towel and my awesome new beach hat :) I was going to explore more but this water sucked me in, I couldnt leave!



Lunch destination, perfect spot to cool off at the end of the beach! The pictue on the top of this page is from lunch here - AMAZING VIEW! I learned very quickly that grilled fish is a tad different in Greece than it is in America - were talking the WHOLE FISH - no filets for this girl! I learned the hard way hwen I order the catch of the day, which came out in the form of 6 mini fishies, their eyes staring at me and smelling like, well I wont go into that much detail. I couldnt send it back since it was what I ordered, but luckly a nice Irish couple at the table next to me remarked how good it looked so I gladly handed it off to them. I then attempt to explain what a "fillet" of fish was, and eventualy got a GREAT piece of dorado (sordfish  - really sad it was cathc and release in Mexico, that bad boy woulda been so good!) togo wiht my greek salad - which is UH AWESOME in Greece (doh?).



Another cute Greek home, perfectly placed on the water... Becuase of the view I think I will take this one instead ;)



Heading back to Port, my hotel is the yellow one- Hotel Grotto, the best service I have ever recieved. All of the  "hotels" here are just small family oned establishments that have PERFECT service! I capped off day 3 with a relaly really good mexican meal - maybe it was so good becuase I had been craving Mexican food for about, oh 40 days - but the Margrita was awesome and the Gauc had a great kick to it.

Day 3:

Scuba, and more adventuring!

My Awesome Dive for the day - A sunken WWII Fighter ( According to Craiggers The aircraft I dove on was a Bristol Beaufighter. It was used by the British during the war I n the Mediterranean as maritime recon and interdiction.) It had been sunk by the Germans (right Criag???) and landed PERFECTLY on its belly  at about 30m (99ft). The conditions were great, 20m visibility, we dove with 5mil Full wetsuit and hood (which I found a little bit excessive!)



Courtsey of Craigers - the plane in action. I kept wishing I could show Grandpa Bosley these pictures  - I knew he would have a story for me, heck he probaly knew the pilot ;)



The left prop (look at me using, what I think is, proper auernotical termonology!) was shot off, causing the ultimate demise of the plane. You could see the bullet holes in the side of the plane!

not me... but still neat Pix of the front of the plane

The tail, it was neat to see the "interior" construction... what was under the outer layer of metal

ME and my plane! It was crazy, noone on the island believed me that it was there! When I showed the pictures to my hotel lady she asked me to email them to her, she wanted to print them out and put this one in a frame on the front desk so people could see it! She had lived on the island her whole life and didnt know about it!

 A nice part about this dive was that it was right off shore and only 1 take so we were out an back in about an hour, which left me more beach time on my last day of Naxos!

I found myself a secluded beach! I couldnt see anyone for about half a mile, it was awesome!  This was about 4 km past Plaka (a name you wll hear a lot, it seems to be EVERYWHERE!) where the dive took off from

 

My ride around the island - i got pretty good at it after a while! It would only go up to 50km, but it got me around. It was much more fun than a car, and I got a tan while going!



A pretty good end to a fun day! The Margratias were AMAZING, and it was rather refreshing to have something other than greek salads (as good as they are) The Guac was awesome too, had a good kick to it... OK I am repeating what i said above - they had a resturant in town and one on the beach in Plaka. This is where I left my Ipad for about 2 hours, I knew where it was the whole time ;)

Athens - finally!

Sorry for not updating this earlier, but I am trying to soak up the sights, and SUN – speaking of sun OMG (Did I really jsut use OMG - one would think that 7 years of higher education would have taught me better!) is it hot here! Like sweltering, sweaty, im gonna die if I don’t think 15 bottles of water a day hot! I don’t think I have ever sweat so much in my entire life, but to my credit, I am not as bad as a lot of the people I have seen who look like complete hot messes – I’m only ¾ hotmess!  So, on with Athens!!  I am going to combine the trip into one blog to make it easy, so its gonna be a tad long – just enjoy the pictures!

I arrived in Athens around 2:00 on day 1 (I do not know what day of the week it is to save my life, I just know how many days I have in each place! People were surprisingly rude at the airport, taxi and hotel – do they not realize their country is having some serious financial issues and they should be happy for an American looking to spend money?!?!?  I was BEAT tired for flying overnight, and knew I needed a little nap, but didn’t want to miss anything so Iheaded out for a little adventuring. My hotel was in an area of Athens called Plaka – it is right at the base of the Parthenon,  everything I easily accessible by walking, and all the little shops and restaurants were about 2 min away. This was the PERFECT place to stay, if anyone (*ahhhhem, Lynnae*) ever spends time in Athens I highly recommend finding a hotel in Plaka. I walked around for about 2 hours, compared souvenir prices (since I am coming back to Athens, I did not want to buy anything and have to lug it around the islands). I was retty worn out and the US Women’s were in the finals of the world cup that night so I headed back to the hotel for a little nap, after finding a place that actually showed the game (much harder that you would think, there is literally ONE sports bar in Athens!) As we all know now the US lost, but I did get to expierence a shot of Ouzu (ao gross, why would people ever want this – it taste like black licorice!) and then a shot of Sambuca (a tad better than Ouzu, but still NOT good.) and headed back to the hotel. The game dindt start until 945, and went to overtime and PK’s so it was about 1:30 when I was walking home, tyet much to my surprise all the restaurants and about half the shops were still open. As I would learn throughout my trip, Greece (and apparently most of Euro) stays up LATE – dinner is normal around 10, restaurants don’t open till 7:30 sometimes,  and kids, were talking like 6 years old, are commonly seen in the streets with their parents at midnight. Real weird.

The next morning, despite planning on getting up at 8 so I could see a slightlyless crowed view of The Acropolis, I slept until ten. It is Amazing how close together everything was, I was able to do Acropolis, The Temple of Zeus, Olympic Stadium, Gardens, Parliament (and tomb of the unknown) and Syngigan Square by 5:00! The one thing I did notice, other than my sweat, was that I kept forgetting to eat - for some reason sushi sounded good… when in Greece?... I had the BEST sushi I have ever had, the rice was so sticky that you could bite the massive California  Rolls in half (you had to they were huge I couldn’t even fit it all in my big mouth!).  It really weird to me that I had awesome Italian in Cape Town and great Sushi in Athens, I think it is how fresh the ingredients that people use are, that is what I am going to keep telling myself.  I Will let the pictures do the talking for my day tour of Athens

Pathenon -

The Parthenon was a temple dedicated to Godess Athena Parthenos (Virgin Godess). Parthenon is a unique Doric building that successfully combines also the Ionic order (when I was reading all of this the online World Art History class I had to take in cleege came back ot me, kinda weird since I was not a fan of the class!). The lack of an altar in the east, and the inner arrangement of the cella show that the building was not only used for religious purposes, It is known that in the west room (opisthodomos) was kept all the wealth of the Delian League. Furthermore, the gold and ivory statue of Athena that stood inside the main temple, was covered with the gold of Athens' allies. This proves that the Parthenon actually was the   treasury of the Delian League, containing wealth that Athens had misappropriated from the allies.

Its rare to get this unabstructed view, as normally work is being done on the restoriation of the temples, which means they are covered partially by cranes and harnesses.



It was SO miserably hot I didnt really know what to do withyself! Hello hotmess, how are you today?



Another shot of Parthanon, you can see the scaffolds on the right where restoriation is being done.

Details on the top of the Parthenon



Caryatides - on the side of The Erechtheion -  Suposidly the inspiration for the statue of liberty (?)



The Erechtheion -

The Erechteum was the most sacred place in Athens. In there were worshiped the gods: Athena (Goddess of wisdom), Poseidon (Sea), Hephaestus (God of Fire, patron of craftsmenship), and the mythical heroes and kings: Kekrops, Boutis and Erechteus. Traces of the quarrel between Athena and Poseidon in order to become protectors of the city can be found here, It is said Athens got its name because Athena defeated Posidon for the city. Athena offered the olive tree and Poseidon used his trident to brake the rock from where salty water came out. The "marks" of his trident are still visible.

The spot where Erechtheum was built was not chose by chance. It was there that the Mycenaean palace with all of its sanctuaries stood, nearly a thousand years before. The main characteristic of Erechtheum is the south wing with the woman-shaped columns, the Caryatides. In this place, was believed to be the tomb of Kekrops.



Walking out of Proplaea - the oldest of the Acopolis buidings sating back to 479 BC



The temple of Zeus -

The massive temple of Zeus, the most important building in the Altis, standing in its very centre, is the largest temple in the Peloponnese, considered by many to be the perfect example of Doric architecture. Construction began c. 470 and was completed before 456 BC, when an inscribed block was let into the east gable to support a gold shield dedicated by the Spartans in commemoration of their victory at Tanagra.



I love this shot of the Temple of Zeus becuase you can see The Partenon in the background.

Panathinaiko (Panathenaic) Stadium - now know as Kallimarmaro

In ancient times, it was used to host the athletic portion of the Panathenaic Games, in honour of the Goddess Athena. During classical times, the stadium had wooden seating. It was remade in marble, by the archon Lycurgus, in 329 BC and was enlarged and renovated by Herodes Atticus, in 140 AD, to a seated capacity of 50,000. The remnants of the ancient structure were excavated and refurbished, with funds provided by Evangelis Zappas for the revival of the Olympic Games. Hosted the first modern Olympic Games in 1896. Reconstructed from the remains of the ancient Greek stadium, the Panathinaiko is the only major stadium in the world built entirely of white marble.

Scaffolding on the back side of the Parthanon- noramlly what about 3/4 of the momument looks like - from what I was told... I dont know why but I can not rearragne the location of this Pix, it should be up with the Acropolis pictures! Grrr, after 15 min I give up - which stinks becuase for some reason I can not upload the really cool pictures of the tunnel leading to Olympic Stadium!

Theater of Dionysos -  (this again should be up with the Acropolis Pix, but apparently my blog does not like me today!)

The Theatre of Dionysus is a major open-air theater and one of the earliest preserved in Athens. It was used for festivals in honor of the god Dionysus (god of wine and patron of drama - sign me up!). It is  located at the southwest slope of the Acropolis, and claimed by many to be the oldest theatre in the world.




View from above the Theatre of Dionysus (take from the top of Acropolis)



Sancruary of Asclepius - The Doric Stoa (again part of Acfropolis - located next to the Theatre of Dionysus- Dear Blogspot.com please let me rearrange my pictures?!?!)

The sanctuary of Asclepius, the Asclepieion was founded in the end of 5th century B.C. by Telemachus who brought the cult of the god-doctor in Athens from Epidaurus. The sanctuary consisted of a the small temple of Asclepius and two stoas. The one was Doric and two-storied. This was used as an infirmary. It was called enkoimeterion (the place where someone sleeps) because there slept the patients waiting to see the god in their dream giving the advises for treatment or to cure them. The sanctuary was destroyed in 267 A.D. by their Heruli and later on, there was built a Christian basilica dedicated to the Saints Anargyri, not by chance, as they are considered protectors of health.



Looking over the South Slope and a portion of Athens

Parlament and the Tomb of the Unknown - the soilders did a funky lil two-step dance around the tomb for about 10 min. I got bored and moved on at that point - I hope they are not still dancing!

After heading back to the hotel for a MUCH MUCH MUCH needed shower and nap and I walked around Plaka a bit, looking again in the curious shops (the little gift shops), although I vowed not to buy giftstil lthe return trip (put your requests in now…) I couldn’t Pass up the Greek sandal shops and ended up buying three pair for myself, since I live in sandals for as long as WI winter will allow me too (see below). I found dinner at a little café, all of the restaurants have great outdoor seating areas, open and serving food until 2 am. I had yet another Greek salad, I have been living on them & tried Moussaka (a greek dish made with potato’s, meat, onions, tomato’s and a tad of white sauce – then baked in layers) which was good but not great.

First Greek Beer - pretty good lager, not great but drinkable. I have been ordering this since, although I have been drinking a lot of great local wines!

Greek beer Round 2

The sandals I picked up (I got another pair in Naxos...) they literally have thousands of differnt styles in a ton of colors ranging from 25-35 euro. Let me know if anyone wants a pair, they are really cute on *even the white ones, I can see you cringing lookng at these Krissy*

The next day I had to be ready for pick up at 545 AM to head to Naxos. The taxi drivers were all on strike – the government was going to open the Taxi’s to anyone who wanted a permit, currently only 1,500 have Athens permits,  so they went on strike which was awesome for me since roads weren’t busy at all and a lot of people couldn’t get to the monuments… But stunk when I had to be picked up an hour earlier by a van taking half the city to the ferry terminals!