We have done Rick Steve tours around museums, towns and villages all over Europe. Ann generally manages to come up with at least one each time we are in this part of the world. His books and website are very much a part of her research team! This time we set out for a morning tour of the old town. As noted earlier some Venetian nobles built the Kastro, their castle and home when they stayed here after their particular Crusade. It was the Venetian capital for this part of the world.
The Kastro was built with many access points, but just two gates survive. Note the wooden door and hinge. Impressively it's been standing for over 800 years, and kept quite a few pirates out, but didn't work with the Turks.
The streets were made narrow and twisty with many low arches and protrusions. This was to make it as difficult as possible for the pirates and any other invaders.
Because of its origins, there is a little bit of Italy about this place including some of the family names. Many of the door lintels still have family crests cknowledging their past owners.
A lot of the castle's old homes are now shops, plenty of trinkets, jewellery, and mementos available here. There is a family making bread in the middle of the old market area, and a few small fruit and vege stores and supermarkets. Although the Kastro is about a thousand years old, there are still people living here. Lord only knows what the plumbing is like after centuries of use. The water in the bays and harbour are crystal clear so things must be working as they should. And the cats enjoy the locality too!
There are three museums under construction, courtesy of EU funding. The town will eventually have an archeological museum, another covering Cycladic art and a Byzantine museum. We can confirm construction is under way. The Byzantine Museum seems almost done.
The 13th century Church at the top of the town in the nobles' precinct, could be mistaken for Orthodox, but it is definitely Catholic, complete with pews and an icon over the altar to honour Mary. It's actually reversible: John the Baptist is on the other side!
There are bars and restaurants aplenty in the area and it is fantastic to see it all still standing and providing for the locals so many centuries on.
We headed home with a hot loaf of bread straight from the baker's oven, I haven't had that experience since I was a small child and we used to visit the bakery just down the road from my Grandmother's house in Pt Chevalier in Auckland. We could just wander in off the street and watch the dough being mixed and the tins loaded up and put into large very hot ovens. The Kastro baker's oven is like a pizza oven. He obviously does a fine business supplying local restaurants.
We navigated our way down to the beach for a dip in the afternoon, then came home to plan the next three days with a car, with the rest of the island to explore.
The car was delivered a little late on Sunday; that suits as we can just return it a little bit late on Wednesday on the way to our farewell ferry. It's a Peugeot 208 from cousin Coralea's recommended provider Naxos Ride. It's very similar to Ann's car, but she's happy to sit this one out.
We headed north out of Chora, along the coast, but quite high up on the hills. Lovely views and a few small coves on this west coast and not really any good roads to get down to them.
There is some farming, mostly goats on the island. They say there are six goats for every Naxian. Plenty of olive trees in small groves, and many wild trees on the hillsides. The terracing is not as comprehensive as in Sifnos, but it is used.
There is quite a bit of market gardening, with potatoes, tomatoes and aubergines in the small paddocks and also in private gardens. Dominantly subsistence scale rather than intensive and large scale. Fewer churches here than on Sifnos, though tiny chapels popped up frequently as we drove along. Like Sifnos there are occasional defensive towers.
It's about 40 km to Apollonas, a bay at the northern tip of the island. They are slow kms but we aren't in any hurry. The island has masses of marble, and there is evidence of quarrying at varying scale all around the island. We stopped to view a kouros, a large marble statue, just before Apollonas. This one, either Apollo or Dionysus, never got past the supine stage after it was started about 530 BC, it is massive 10.7m long and 2.6 m wide. It was taking shape, but either the buyer ran out of money, or the slab developed splits, and there it lies 2500 years later. If the arms had been completed there would be no mystery as to who was being statued. Dionysus would be holding a kantharos in his right hand and a copper thyrus in his left. Can't confirm what Apollo preferred to carry, probably Aphrodite.
We had coffee and a leg stretch at Apollonas in the picturesque little bay.
Next destination was Lionas Bay on the west coast. Again a very hilly drive to get there through tiny villages high in the mountains. Mining seems to be a bit of a West Coast thing. This area has some of the finest emery stone in the world. It has been an export product for more than 100 years. It used to support about 3000 miners, now it's about 300 who mine for a few months in the autumn. In an interesting bit of marketing, all the production has to be given to the government who do the selling. The past boom industry is still evident with many mine shafts, and remnants of the overhead infrastructure of pylons and the aerial cableway which carried the product down to the ships for loading.
You will likely recall emery paper and probably used it for sanding metal things in your childhood. Some of it was probably snaffled from father's garage to smooth the edges of balsa wood gliders.
Many of the miners suffered silicosis and other ills assosciated with deep underground work, probably no social welfare state in those days, just the shortened life. There are other minerals that have been mined along this side of the island as well as the dominant industry - marble. As we drove home we passed a huge marble mining excavation.
Our lunch was to be at Delfinaki at Lionas Beach. As we pulled up under the shade of a casuarina, Pappa Koufopoulou was already walking down the restaurant stairs, huge smile on this face and beckoning us in. We were duly seated in dappled shade with a bouganvillea covering the pergola. The son was our waiter, and the food was cooked by Mamma. Given the nature of the roads and the 33 degree heat, we resisted the drinks menu, couldn't really afford a nap on the way home. Food was Greek home style. Very tasty filo cheese pies stuffed with the local soft cheese xynomyzithra as appetiser, Ann with the braised pork and mine had to be Mamma's moussaka. The pork was very tasty, but dry, and the moussaka was exceptionally tasty. The complimentary dessert was sensational, semolina halva with preserved plum or orange accompanied by rakamelo, a grappa-type of liqueur, to be sipped, not drunk as a shot!!
The waiter delivered two large books of family photos for our perusal. Much of the produce is grown by Pappa, so not too many middlemen in all this.
The table next to us was occupied by South African kiwis, now resident in Christchurch, and their London-based daughter who was sharing part of their holiday. They also had had a parent in the navy in WW2, so we had a brief discussion around that bit of history. Both Dad and the South African guy's father were based at Tricomalee in Ceylon. Dad was there on Gambia for quite a few months as part of the assembled British and American fleets, primarily attacking Japanese bases in Indonesia.
Ann tried a dip in the cool clear deep blue water, I did lifeguard duties for this one and sat in the shade.
We drove home across the island. and sorted the plan for tomorrow's excursion.
The Temple of Demeter was our first port of call following cousin Coralea's recommendations after her visit here a month or so ago. We had a bit of an adventure finding the temple, very little of the signposting actually mentioning Demeter, however as he's the god of agriculture we thought we should persevere. So we got there after some 'discussion' with a local farmer (the pointing was useful) and a couple of circumnavigations. The Pug handled the goat tracks quite well really, despite its small size.
The temple was built originally starting around 530 BC. Everything was marble, including the whole roof. It was built by the farming community in this relatively small valley and eventually changed into a Christian church.
The associated museum had good interpretive signage, but you needed a fair amount of imagination to make statues or pedestals out of the remnant pieces. We had worked hard to get to the place, and it was well worth the visit.
We left the temple in the direction that we should have approached the site, just to see what we missed. Goat tracks, farm tracks and dry creek gulches is a pretty fair summary of that short route. And no sign at the entrance off the main road!!
Our tour took us on through several hill towns, a couple of which we will come back to tomorrow.
We did stop at Apiranthos, reputedly the most beautiful village on the island. It's also called the marble village reflecting the construction of the buildings and even the pathways.
Parking had been described by our friend Rick Steve as chaotic here. It was worse than that as the community had assembled for a funeral and the after party. They were pouring out of the lovely Orthodox Church as we were walking into the main street area.
Nice cool finish to the sightseeing with a swim at Agios Anna, a lovely coarse sanded beach, more or less on our way home.
Parking was a bit ordinary, there was plenty of it, but the space also acted as the village tip, or most likely transfer site so it was a less than glamorous experience. But the beach itself was great.
One of the rites of passage for Chora is to watch the sunset from the Portara hill, where that remnant of the Temple of Apollo sits. So we walked into town after dinner, through the downtown area which was heaving with diners, shoppers and lots heading to Portara hill.
There was a little bit of cloud around on the horizon, so it was a very nice, but not spectacular, sunset for us. We watched from the breakwater which is made up of big blocks of marble. This might seem extravagant in other parts of the world, but this island is pretty much made of the stuff.
Our final sightseeing day, again on the recommendation of cousin Coralea, was the olive oil producer at Eggares, one of Naxos's oldest remaining olive mills. We tagged in with a group of American women on a guided tour. The woman who explained the process, harvesting, varieties, the history of the factory and the applications for olive oil was great. She was a real raconteur and gave us a great experience. In the old days the olives were first crushed, and then placed in a goat hair bag (goat hair is non-absorbent) and pressed with the addition of boiling water to run into the tubs below. The oil naturally separates and was put into clay pots for use. In hard times it was an important family nutrient.
We tasted two contrasting Extra Virgin Olive Oils initially, the best stuff doesn't have the lingering peppery after-taste. Then we tried a range of olive oil with added flavours (lime, chocolate, garlic, orange , chilli, truffle), all very nice but I'm not sure when you'd be using them. Then there were bowls of olives to sample and various tapenades and marmalades along with samples of cakes and breads baked with olive oil.We would thoroughly recommend the experience.
Then we drove back up into the hills to view the Flerio kouros. This was a 5m sculpture of a boy dating from about 600 BC. It appears that one of his legs broke while the partially completed piece was being transported to a workshop for finishing. So the sculpture was abandoned where it broke.
Further on through the hills we stopped to view the church of Panagia Drosani. This is a 6th century Christian Church predating the Greek Orthodox traditions.
The old frescoes are still visible and the interior of the church is tiny with lots of little side rooms with old icons but the church is obviously still an integral part of the local community with the small graveyard, full of many large marble above-ground graves from very recent times, even this year. Apparently in Greece there is a shortage of cemetery space and burial lots are leased for short periods, say 3-5 years and then the remains are exhumed, cleaned and moved into small caskets which then go into a different ossuary storage areas.
Our last hilltop village visit was to Halki, where we sampled Kitron, a favorite Greek liqueur since 1896 after checking out the old still initially used to make it. The distillery buys grappa and infuses it with leaves from the Kitron plant. Kitron is like a giant lemon. Like the Eggares Olive Mill this business is fifth generation.
The village is also big on textiles and embroidery, and has a lovely fish and olive themed art gallery. We thought that this was a really pretty place with lots of bouganvillea and courtyard restaurants.
We headed to Agios Anna again for a swim and a cool down on the way home. Another local dining experience tonight at To Elliniko, the 'go-to' dining spot in Naxos we believe. And it lived up to expectations. Dolmades as a starter then I had the chicken fillet and Ann the recommended lamb and vegetables slow cooked in a paper parcel. Very good!
Tomorrow return the rental on our way to catch the ferry back to Athens.
Farewell Naxos, we've had a great experience here.
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