Greece through the Eyes of the Best Post Three

View of Temple of Demeter early church and mountains

Though this blog is written one month since we left Naxos Island, the visit remains almost magical in John's and my minds.  I cannot pretend to tell the story of the history of the Island, nor the names of the many Greek Orthodox Churches that we saw.  As in the first two days, I will try to highlight some of the special moments, though when you have the daughter of one of your best friends as your guide, you hear lengthy explanations regarding the worth of this or that church or place, you feel as though you are in the presence of the moment.  Sophia was incredible because she has a passion for the history and the nature of Greece.  Thank you so much for your time, your hospitality and your knowledge.

We started our first full day with the mandatory visit to the Temple of Demeter or Dimitras.Apparently, this is one of the most important, in part because the ruins leave enough materials to know what it looked like and because of she was the Goddess of the Harvest, the grains and the crops. "In her day" her oracle would predict how the season might turn out and was trusted. Of course I was fascinated by this--Many ideas for plays cropped up--musical theatre at its best. The Temple itself was amazing even if it was in ruins and the little Orthodox Church next to it relatively unassuming.

Obviously the street sign to the Temple

Ruins of temple 

Temple with old Orthodox Church (smaller than it looks)

Some of the old ruins and restoration efforts

Show of the new granite and old granite

One of the distinguishing features of Naxos marble which makes it famous and also hard to carve is that it has white crystal embedded in it that is very hard.  The crystal shines brightly in the sun and makes the newly carved pieces of this temple literally glitter.  It is quite astounding (and I certainly imagined that Oracle being alive and speaking).  Sadly she was actually just a place where you could leave money and pour water in a sluice.  Depending on the speed or way it went down was the kind of harvest you would have.  And of course there were lots of variants of this so that Oracle Demetrius could be vague!

Here is the small Orthodox Church built right on the sight of the temple, much later

From the temple, we chose to see one of Sophia's favorite sights (Pat and Quail had already had a day's tour with Sophia and Sylvie, and had seen quarries and marble factories, so on this day, we got to have a great time with Old Olive Trees.  We were being taken to the 10,000 year old Olive tree, which was an unbelievable sight.

Old Spring and Fountain

This old Spring and fountain has provided fresh water to whomever passes by for 100's of years.  We all drank from it except John and none of us got sick. We crawled over a wall & were in the presence of the old Olive Trees.

One Olive tree 10,000 years old

John walking in the middle 

Quail and John marveling

Quail Marveling

Sophia giving lessons in Olive tree growth

We learned that Olive Trees are hard to kill!  They grow and grow with enormous roots from the bottom.  One trunk will die, and another sprout grow to be a full tree, die and the situation is repeated.  This tree is the oldest at least on Naxos Island.  You could walk around inside the middle of this one tree, yet you could see each pieces relationship to one another.  I have to say that at one point the sheer age of the trees around us was overwhelming.  To have Quail sit down just to think about the enormity of it all was astonishing.  We found 6000 year old trees and 3000 year old trees.  Here is one in between.

Probably 3000-4000 year old tree

Quail of course had noticed a dead goat on his way into the tree area and was determined to somehow take the horns of this billy home.  He repented of his ways after trying to loosen the horns from the dead head and the smell of the dead rotting carcass knocked him over.  (I have learned that as soon as I spot danger, I start breathing through my mouth and can no longer smell horror.)

dead goat

horns and quails feet and cane-not a nice smell

We had noticed a very white orthodox church right above the old olive trees and Sophia explained that pretty much everywhere there were harvest possibilities there would be a church, and this one was no different.  It was a bit newer than most of the larger churches and inside was arrayed with many pictures of Jesus, and all the apostles and other saints from the Orthodox Church.

Pretty Orthodox Church near Olive Trees

Inside the Church

One astounding thing that we saw were crocus growing up the sides of the rocks.  They did not seem to have any ground from which to grow but were just as sweet.  Sophia explained that this was the right time of year for them to be around.

They are definitely Crocus

Sophia is passionate about her role, (she knows so much)

We left this lovely sight and headed to another round of old Orthodox Churches.  I have to say that though I don't remember many of the names or histories of all the churches we saw, I was overwhelmed by the age.  Some of them had been built in 13th to 15th century BC, and nearly all had been destroyed once (or the Frescoes defaced) usually by early muslims who invaded Greece and the islands and then repainted in a way by Orthodox when they came back to conquer.  Again, one thing that astounded me, was that it seemed that individuals, not governmental or church officials were the people that maintained these churches (especially the small really old ones) and had the keys and were particularly detailed about how the pictures were laid out, the frescoes kept cleaned and fresh linen on some parts of the church.  There usually was also some "gold" and/or "gold" trinkets hanging down to give a little glitter to these small old churches.  One of Sophia's is one of the St. John's the Divine (not the fancy old one that is part of a resort area now) but one is an old field down a dirt rocky road, where the key was kept by a nice lady somehow making a living in this rocky farmland.

As best as I can tell Church of St. John the Divine

This was the view from outside an ancient wall of this old church

 I really thought that this was part of a farm.  Sophia had left us to go to find the key.  Sylvie was hunting around for a way to walk in (she had been here many times before) and I was looking for a pristine white church (oops)

Entrance

Sophia uses big old key to get into church

Fresco facade from probably 500 AD

Group chatting about the old church

Hard to see, but this was the center fresco at the alter.  Had been defaced and replaced.

  The amazing thing about the whole experience is that just around the corner through some beautiful fruit and vegetable fields, there was another old church.  The same lady maintained both.  As we walked, Quail quickly pointed out the old water pump.

An old water pump

Plum tree

Not sure but I think that this is a Greek Potato Tree

Pomegranate Trees

Fig Tree

walking to the small church

Sophia did explain that most people irrigated their gardens.  They seemed verdant and loaded with fruit.  Partly this is due to fruit best suited for the area, but also that they can get water from wells.

smaller very old Orthodox Church near the other

This is random, but usually John Sophia Sylvie were at the top Quail and I at the rear.  Hmmm

This is the way (familiar to me-this  JB & my walks)

After spending much time driving and looking we headed back to the beach, stopping to see the old fort on the top of the Mountain (a place that apparently Sylvie climbed on her 80th birthday at some trepidation) but that is loaded with historical significance (a community faced with war built this fort and lived free of the ravages of war for some time until another group {maybe muslim} found a way up and destroyed it and the people).  The left overs are still there, and it is quite the tourist hike.  We were in no way going to do it.

Old Fort ruins

We returned and John and I took a quick walk around after our day...Me to stretch my back, John to make sure I didn't break my back (ridiculous).  We had heard that there was this sort of fancy hotel castle that was being built at the end of the road and then abandoned after the crunch of the economy, so it was just standing there.  Indeed it was.

Amazing and ridiculous

After a "rest" we had a delicious dinner with Sophia and her family.  Cristos and his father and Sylvie, Nic and the rest of our tribe were treated to something better than a restaurant and had the warm friendship that comes from years of our love for Nic and Sylvie.  We listened to Nikos guitar concert. (amazing!) and were so grateful for the way in which the family embraced us.  I am not sure that we will ever forget this experience even though we had another day and a half to go.

Sophia with all veggies fresh from the garden

Sophia slicing the lamb

Quail has the empty plate syndeome

Pat, John and Cristos

I love that Nic was digging into his food as if he had never seen Greek Food before!

Next blog to follow as soon as I can get all the pictures in order!!!