Greece through the Eyes of the Best Post Four

A Huge Day in Naxos

Hope you enjoy this video of a man squashing grapes undoubtedly for wine.  These would not be the best probably, but it was fascinating watching him.

On this Day, Pat and Quail were leaving but not before a beautiful drive from one side of Naxos to the other, a visit to a lovely village with lots of history, a visit to the Church in Which Terrie and Greg Emmanuel were married and Nikoli Christened.  At the end of the day a farewell to Pat and Quail who did not know the disaster/comedy that would occur as they left Naxos.

I am at a loss to know exactly how to strip the pictures from this beautiful packed day.  We left as early as possible in order to drop the rental car off and voyage on to see a few churches and to village of Apiranthos and to the Monastery of Fotodotis and then to take Pat and Quail to the Ferry.

Sign for Naxos Town

 Sylvie dropping rental car off

Sweet Downtown view

Narrow streets of Naxos

I want to be clear in this blog (all of them in Naxos) that the roads everywhere are very narrow, and my devotion to Sylvie and her daughter only grew as they dived down little side streets, unpaved, barely graveled, sometimes opening goat gates to go through and always dodging other cars, most of which were small but occasionally huge lorries with insane amounts of "stuff" on the top.  I was blown away by their skill set!

We next went to pick Sophia up and while she was getting ready, I admired her view.  I took a video of one of her cats stretching and slowly moving to a new sitting place but better sense of others had me delete this video. I do feel sad that there electric wires everywhere on the island and many lovely shots are sort of destroyed by them.  But here you see both the division of property with the stone wall and just the spectacular view from their porch.  This family are hard workers making both wine and olive oil, and fishing and helping with EMT support for our brand of "safari holiday makers" gone wrong (deep sea diving without proper knowledge).  So something is always going on with them, and they are amazing.  But back to the day.

We first went to a lovely old church with the best frescoes we had seen.  I believe it was St. Isadore.

old old frescoes

destroyed and refurbished frescoes

Love the tinkly bells addition

We drove on from this church through the mountains.  We had spectacular views.  We were headed for Apiranthous which is on the other side of the city.

The marble mine

Definitely the Marble Quarry--can you see sparkles of crystal

Rock formations

beautiful drives

oops stopping, is everything ok?

We were on our way to Apiranthos Village--meaning "Plenty of Flowers".  It certainly did, and it certainly had a huge history.  Apparently the people here are very different from those on the rest of the island.  They were largely Athenian but had strong bonds that resisted the outside. This village was one of my favorite stopping places.

This monument about struggle and strife gives us entrance 

We missed a few of tourist buses for which I am grateful.  This tiny village would be inundated before the day was done.

This is the site of the Old Fort with the new wall 

The old Fort protected the village for many years but finally there was much bloodshed.  But the people of the village have maintained their old ways as much as possible, have established museums to the old ways and archeological finds that are just incredible.

Museum of Archeological finding

We spent a very long time in the Archeological museum and found that the Museum of Fine arts was a gallery with paintings for sale.

Two favorite pot pictures

Lots of gifts bought here!

View of the mountains

Lots more gifts bought here

More favorite pots

Proof Picture that Quail, Pat and Sophia are actually there.  Me, too

We left the village of Apiranthos with some sadness.  We had coffee in one of the tiny houses and thought about beer but it was early.  Our last vision was of Quail singing to Juliet on this little picture.

Quail and his soliloquy

As we gathered outside the village, we saw a really awesome windmill except that it cannot generate wind anymore...

The old windmill open

The old windmill closed

One of the places that I really wanted to go for personal reasons was the Monastery of Fotodotis where my friends Greg and Terrie (and the son and daughter-in-law) of our friends Sylive and Nic were married and their son was christened.  I had heard hysterical stories of their marriage from Terrie, but I had no idea how all of that fit together.  Sophia and Sylvie were happy to show us, and wow, I understand why Terrie hunted this place out and why her hysterical runs to the villages to get materials for the reception etc, were so difficult.  Obviously, it must have been quite an experience, but the place was magical.

mts to sea from the opposite side of Naxos

Favorite view picture from near the Monastery-Church

Curvy Roads!!!! Get to the Monastery alive

Goats on the curvy road!

The walk to the Monastery

Thinking about this beautiful place

When we got down to the edge of the entrance to the Monastery, Sophia lifted the goat fence and we walked under and down to the monastery.  No way to describe it.

The Bell at the Monastery

Come on in!

In we go

Entrance to the Monastery

The Monastery of Fotodotis

 After we left the Monastery (we could not get inside unfortunately) but it was time to get to Naxos town and deliver Pat and Quail to the ferry.

So, I don't know how to describe the next issues.  Pat and I had looked on line (in fairness to the ferry department) and the ferry time was totally different than the ticket time that we had personally bought and checked several times.  We had not received any notification of change of times.  We assumed that our ticket times were right.  But, sadly, Pat and Quail got on the ferry headed for Crete and that would be several hours the wrong directions from Athens.  She WhatsApp'd me and we went through all the possible scenarios to get them to their plane the next day.  Sylie knew that the slow ferry would be coming through and recommended that they take it.  And suggested that they get a room. This was a good plan.  The last note we got from them was a picture of them having wine and dinner in their "stateroom" as they were going to be all night on the ferry getting back to Greece.

They look so happy despite the horror of the day.

For us it was one more night and a morning and day with Nic and Sylvie.  So there we were. Delicious dinner at Faros, and sunset in our flat on Naxos.

Good night for now

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!!!