Blogs from Naxos, South Aegean, Greece, Europe

Today I’m hoping to tick off a bucket list item. It’s something else that we didn’t quite get around to last year, a climb up the mighty Mount Zas. OK so it’s not Everest, but it is still a very respectable 1,004 metres high, or 1,001 metres or 999 metres, depending on which source you believe, which either way makes it the highest mountain in the Cyclades. I follow Issy and the rest of the Rembrandts down to the port where they’ll be spending their morning producing masterpieces. I then bid my beloved farewell and board a bus for the ride up into the centre of the island to the start of the climb. I’m dropped off seemingly in the middle of nowhere just past the village of Filoti. The first few hundred metres is up ... read more

Today might be our last chance for a full day of relaxation before we go home so we decide not to waste it. We pull up sunlounges next to the pool and then on the beach. It’s very overcast and it looks like it might have rained overnight. We don’t do anything so I don’t know what to write about, so intelligent readers should probably stop here. For the rest of you….. We’re fairly sure now that someone doesn’t come along every morning and fill in the large holes that get dug on the beach every day. We were going to dig an unusually shaped test hole and come back the next day to see whether it was still there, but the sand’s really hard and we both forgot to pack our spades when we left ... read more

It was a big day yesterday so we’re a bit slow off the mark this morning. We spend the day doing very little other than lying by the pool and on the beach, so I take the opportunity to read up a bit more about Naxos. Greek mythology has it that Zeus, the father of the gods, was raised here on Naxos. In the real world the ever reliable Wikipedia tells us that there’s evidence of neanderthal activity here from as early as 200,000 years ago. From the seventh and eighth centuries BC Naxos dominated commercial activity in the Cyclades, and was described by one sixth century BC historian as being the most prosperous of all the Greek islands. Like much of this part of the world it eventually came under Byzantine rule, and then in ... read more

Today we’re planning to catch the bus to Plaka Beach which is on the island’s west coast about ten kilometres south of Naxos Town. We’ve learned all of about three words of Greek since we got here, and it seems that we‘ve not even done that particularly well, or in this case should I say I’ve not done that particularly well. The Greek word for good morning is “kalimera”, well I think it is, but as I pass one of the hotel staff I bumble out “calamari”. At least she has the good grace to just smile and respond with the correct version of the greeting. Issy’s meanwhile trying to pretend she’s with someone else. We make our way round to the bus station next to the port. We were expecting to be sitting in an ... read more

Today we fly across to the island of Naxos, which is in the South Cyclades group around two hundred kilometres south east of Athens. We climb aboard our smallish propeller plane for the thirty five minute flight. But wait, what’s that in the seat pocket? It can’t be surely. Yes it is, it’s an in-flight magazine. At last count this is the nineteenth flight we’ve taken on this trip, and all we’ve found in any seat pockets until now have been plastic coated safety cards, white paper bags and advertisements for credit cards. We thought that the in-flight magazine had gone the way of the dodo, thanks, we assumed, to the possibility of the dreaded virus lurking within its pages. Presumably advertisements for credit cards are immune, and I guess it could get a bit messy ... read more