A Finger Painter Amongst the Rembrandts

---

Today we head across to the island of Naxos where we start our twenty day art tour of the South Aegean, or should I say Issy’s twenty day art tour. As I think I might have mentioned previously, I couldn’t draw a stick figure if my life depended on it, so I’ve come along purely for the ride. Issy on the other hand is a very talented artist, something she of course denies, and when she reads this I’ll probably be in trouble. So if these blog entries suddenly stop appearing ….

We think the party’s probably about twenty strong. Issy knows a handful of them; other than my beloved I know precisely one. As we wait to board our flight it’s a bit hard not to notice a group of ten or so Aussies who mostly seem to know each other, and of course they turn out to be some of our travelling companions for the next three weeks. Introductions are made, and I concentrate hard on remembering everyone’s name. I manage precisely one, the only other bloke, who’s name’s Dave, the same as mine, so I’m not sure that this is a particularly remarkable achievement. I really suck at remembering names. I hope they’re all friendly, but who’d want to be friendly with someone who can’t even remember your name? And what’s going to happen when they find out I can’t draw? I think I need a drink.

We came to Naxos last year and really liked it. I usually prefer to go to places we haven’t been to before, but if we have to make a repeat visit to somewhere this would certainly be somewhere near the top of the list. Our hotel‘s on a hill overlooking one of Naxos Town’s real highlights - the iconic Portara of the Temple of Apollo.

There are a couple of things I want to do here that we didn’t get around to last year, one of which was the short ferry ride across the water to the neighbouring island of Paros. I check for more detail. Google Maps tells me that the ferry route‘s “mostly flat”, so that’s reassuring.

We make our way nervously down to the dining room for welcome drinks. There are twenty-four people in the party. It comes as a great relief to find out that nine of them are like me, they can’t draw stick figures … well they might be able to, but the important thing is that they’re not going to try, and neither am I, so I may yet be able to keep my artistic deficiencies hidden. I start to relax slightly, assisted by some glasses of the hotel’s home grown rose. I don’t know anything about wine, but I thought rose was supposed to be pink, and this is brown. Well it looks brown to me, but it’s certainly possible that my artistic deficiencies might also extend to not being able to tell colours apart. I think I might need another glass.

---