Nonna (mom) does Naxos

At the crack of dawn, Mom and I arise on Friday morning to be picked up by Christos our taxi driver to take us to the port of Rafina. How easy it is to get to this port rather than going to Piraeus by bus and two metro trains. Our 3 hour boat ride to the island of Naxos was pretty uneventful. We took the Flying Cat 3 a high speed boat. Arrived

safely at the port of Naxos at 10:30 am, was picked up by the hotel in the van and driven to our hotel in Agia Prokopios. The hotel (recommended from Matt Barrett’s site) was a 2 minute walk to the beach. It had about 30 rooms, a pool, restaurant – great hospitality, location and prices.
Mom and I were on the beach by 12; 30! We both agreed that it was better to take the public bus into town (15 mins) than it was to stay in town and take a bus to the beach. Saturday we walked around town in the morning – went to the Portara – a temple of Apollo – it’s a massive doorway which leads to nowhere. It faces exactly to Delos, the birthplace of Apollo. Built in 530 BC but never finished. Then spent the rest of the afternoon on the beach.

The beaches on Naxos are nice and clean. The sand on this beach is actually little pebbles not grains of sand. The water, although, a little chillier than other parts I’ve swam in this spring, was so clear with sandy bottoms. Saturday night we stayed in Agia Prokopios and went to dinner at Sunset Restaurant and watched the sun set!

Sunday we rented a car to drive around the island. I think we only got lost about 6 times!!!! Naxos is quite a green island for the Cyclades Islands and quite mountainous. We had a bright

green Fiat – automatic. We visited the Temple of Dimitrades and then continued to small villages. We were told to go to Apeiranthos as the natives still wore traditional clothing – the village was small and we had a nice lunch there but no traditional clothing! In the afternoon, we drove to this beautiful beach called Kastraki. It was this huge sandy beach with maybe 10 people on it and the water was warm and crystal clear. You definitely needed a car to get there and there were no restaurants or stores but was fantastic!

Sunday evening we took the bus back into town to eat at this wonderful restaurant called Labyrinth which we read about in Fodor’s Greek Islands book – lovely courtyard, great wine list and delicious “non Greek” food. I highly recommend it!
Monday we spent 2 hours on the beach, showered, changed and headed to the port to catch our ferry back to Rafina.

Highlights of the trip: spending good quality time with Mom – we realized that we have never gone on a mother-daughter trip before; playing Scrabble with mom, having mom to discuss issues and talk out logistic issues (I have a lot!), having mom clean and reorganize my house – note – I didn’t ask her to she just loves to do it.

Mom’s highlights: seeing my apartment, meeting my friends, having the nice dinner on the roof top of a restaurant we don’t know the name of looking at the Acropolis, seeing the difference between island life and city life.

THANKS FOR COMING MOM!!!!