St George’s Beach arcs around calm blue waters, restaurants sit at the northern end with their outdoor tables just a few metres from the lapping water. Its 7:30am, so the orderly rows of sun chairs and umbrellas that are clustered along the sand sit empty. A lone swimmer bobs around in the water.
This is Naxos in shoulder season. The pace and feel is so much slower than Santorini. You go to Santorini for the breathtaking views, you come to Naxos to unwind. The timing is good for us, after being ‘on the road’ for nearly two weeks we are getting a bit frayed, and have welcomed the opportunity to slow down. We are trying to eat less, take some time each day to do our own thing, and generally re-orient.
Yesterday, Johanna hung out in our room for the morning while Maria and I got lost in the narrow stone paths that lead up the hill to the ancient castle behind the port.
Built in the 13th century, what remains now houses museums and antique shops with houses and other shops peppered throughout. Pretty amazing to wander around room after room of pots, sculptures, statues, and trinkets, some dating back 4000+ years. Many have been excavated from right here in Naxos.
Impressive Apollo's gate is all that remains of a temple that sat out on a little peninsula at the entrance to the city. We walked out there too and later returned to share the natural swimming spot with the many elderly locals who make a social event of slipping into the cool waters to gossip away the heat of the morning.
As any regular beach goer knows, there is an art to getting changed in public. Perhaps it is the abandonment of age, or maybe European sensibilities, but some of the oldies in these parts forfeit any serious attempt at modesty. The serenity of the waters edge is assaulted somewhat by old blokes with ill-fitting speedos and an oversupply of topless grannies.
We’ve got some heavy travel days ahead. Today we’ll slot into the Naxos groove and do the beach thing again, then we head back by ferry to Santorini for 1 night, cross our fingers we make our connecting flight via Athens back to Istanbul where we crash for a few hours before an early morning flight to Casablanca via Cairo.
We have had an amazing time in Turkey and Greece, but they have been entrees for the main course, which for us on this trip is Morocco. Apart from anecdotes via other travellers, we are not sure what to expect. We have a collective nervous excitement as we get closer.
