Greece through the Eyes of the Best Post Five

Naxos Island

First let me apologize for any confusion on the previous post.  The activity was squashing grapes not olives.  Olives do not come into season until about now or a little later, and that would be nearly 6 weeks since we were in Naxos.  I changed the Youtube an will also change edit the post.

This was our last day on Naxos and since we had only a little more than a half day, we decided to take it easy and visit with Nic and Sylvie as much as sight-see.  Theoretically, this should have been a "chill" day with the high speed ferry taking us to Athens.  As always there are ends to the story.

We had a nice breakfast at Nic and Sylvie's flat and picked up all our things from the other guest house. A Fond farewell to the beauty of the little houses and the beach.

We then went round the island to see the Statue of Kouros Apollonas and the Aqueduct.  We said goodbye to Sylvie's daughter Sophie and visited with her kitties before we drove to the town of Apollonas.

We had been told about Costa's bees, a topic in which Quail was very eager to discuss when he and Pat were there and we were told that there were only a certain number of gallons that you could get from the bees, but that they had very good honey.  I can attest that it was good.  This is a not so good photo of the beehives.

Apparently the statue(s) below were considered to be of Apollo, but because of the beard on him, he now is believed to be Dionysus.  He is one of 3 in Naxos but the biggest.  It was remarkable that he was just sort of lying there with other rubble.

The arms of these Kouros' were always carved with their arms at their sides.  They were huge.

The climb in and out down a nice tree-lined path

We walked from the Kouros to the old Aqueduct.  This really was amazing.  I hope that you can read the description about it.  The reason that Naxos was a developed island was because of the water.  And the reason for the water availability was that the springs at the top of the mountains were corralled by the Aqueduct which wove all around the island up hills and down and north to south east to west.  It is an incredibly complex work of art.

The explanation of the Ancient Aqueduct

Aqueduct itself

I have a hard time thinking of crawling in there to do any repairs but apparently people did.

Direction of the Aqueduct

So, after we left this remarkable area, we wended our way down to the harbor and walked around there for a while thinking that our fast ferry would come.  Remember what I said about the ferry?  This was the actual day when Nic said it, "Oh there is your ferry coming" and we were just sitting around enjoying the day having a bite of lunch.  We still did not have a clue that Pat and Quail's disaster would soon be linked with ours.

The old Gate of Apollo

A more modern marble sculpture of Ariadne on the way to the Palatia

Venetian Palace in center of town

Both Nic and Sylvie had promised that the ferries are never late, yet ours seemed to be very late.  We watched as one Blue Star came in and left and then when the next one came, we asked where it was going and was told Crete.  It was at that point that Sylvie and John went to the Ferry ticket office and came back with the bad news.  Of course Nic had been right for both days.  Pat and Quail got on the Ferry to Crete because the Ferry to Athens had left at least 3 hours earlier.  Our only choice was to wait until 6pm and get the slower Blue Star back to Athens.  The Blue Star was packed with people.  No one would offer you a seat, people were smoking outside and our arrival time in Athens was about 1am.  Sylvie had kindly offered to call their regular taxi driver and she set us up with him to pick us up.  I'm not sure when I have been so tired as this day.  We finally got seats and managed to stay awake, have a very good bite to eat and a cold beer, and finally get off the ferry, be joyous that Demetrius was indeed there to pick us up and very happy to take us to the hotel even though it was nearly an hour drive from the dock.  Live and learn.  Always check your ticket before being stranded on an island, even if it is a beautiful one!