Boots in the Oven

Giving Naxos a look-see, and begging indulgence

And, let the indulgence-begging begin!

With most spare minutes spent fretting over the continuing conspicuous lack of visas for either of us (with an occasional box-packing thrown in here and there - we leave Austin on Sunday!!!!) the blog has seen a definite lack of attention. 

So, here are a few pictures of Naxos, with a little exposition thrown in just for kix.

While we had a lovely time exploring the areas of Hora (Naxos' main town, remember) that could be easily explored by foot, we thought it might be fun to convince some unsuspecting Greeks that they should lend us a l'il scooter to allow us to cover a little more territory.

I will say, Husbear can really drive a scooter - once he gets started.  We only came within mere inches of hitting one parked car, so no harm done...

Hora, being so small, takes about thirty seconds to clear - and soon you're in the stunning interior of the largest island in the Cyclades.  Naxos grows a lot of crops, and they're rightly proud of their vegetables.

Having the scooter (nicknamed Dionysus rather early on, given that the island was his adopted home) allowed us to see the restored temple of Demeter, just south of the town of Ano Sangri.

This temple's history is actually pretty interesting - in the 6th century BCE, a temple to Demeter was erected on the site; then, in the 6th century CE, that temple was torn down and its building materials were used to construct a church, which later fell over and sank into the swamp.  A few years ago, it was discovered that all of the original materials were actually on the site, so serious reconstruction began.

The site was really interesting, but it was definitely time to go learn more about kitron, the drink of Naxos.

It's made from the leaves of the citron tree!  (Otherwise known as the etrog.)

We soon found ourselves feeling hungry, so we pointed trusty Dionysus in the direction of Apiranthos, a town in Naxos' interior made of marble.

It GLEAMED.

To me, marble gives off such a coolness - it immediately refreshed me after the morning on the bike.

We had the loveliest Greek salad

and strolled back to the scooter to go north.

Just a little ways outside of Apiranthos, we stumbled upon a small church held up with twine.

For some reason, we weren't allowed into the church, but there was a beautiful cemetary behind the building.  I'm always drawn to cemetaries, for some reason, and this one was particularly interesting - each grave had a glass box at the top, inside which were relics, reminders of the deceased.  Most held iconography, pictures of the dearly departed,  and some dried flowers, though a few had more unorthodox items - cigarettes, ouzo, playing cards, etc.

Back to Dionysus - who, remarkably, had not been stolen.

Of course we both wore helmets; we're always on the forefront of fashion!

Thus ensued a long and extremely bumpy ride on a road probably not rated for about-town scooters; in actuality, I think the road had been all but washed out by recent rains.  The ride popped us out on the north side of the island, so we could see the kouros near Apollon.  This one is unfinished, jutting out of the island's weathered marble as if to say, "Please sit on me and take a picture.  Or even two."

We obliged.

And my turn (though I just wanted to hang out near him)

It was getting on towards time for us to return our little scooter, so we wrestled Dionysus back onto the road, only to stop two minutes later for...

mountain goats!

How cool is that!  Mountain goats!  Or just goats.  On a hill.  Whatever, I was impressed.

Back to Hora, where we said goodbye to our trusty steed and went back to the hotel to wash up.  This is when I discovered that I actually managed to sunburn the backs of my arms.  Way to go, me.

For our last night on the island before reaching Athens, and thence home, we just had to go back to Lucullus.

First, we showed off our sexy tans at a table in the middle of the street.  Many Naxian restaurants had tables like this, set up on streets that really seemed too tiny to accomodate such a use.

We ordered a tasty spread, trying for ourselves the island's vegetarian bounty.

Dolmathes (grape leaves, these stuffed with rice and seasonings and served with tzatziki), a yogurt and dill soup, an olive spread for our bread, the best fried peppers EVER (ohmygawd these were so good!) and more of their delicious eggplant dip with pomegranate seeds.  Perfect after a day of driving around, open to the elements, in the searing heat.

So, next time... when I can hopefully steal the computer and hide in a corner... Athens.  I run into a friend I hadn't seen in ten years, the Parthenon, the Plaka, some crazy guy advocates elephant suffrage, and we sadly head back to real life.

We arrive in Firenze two weeks from Monday!  (wow.  wow.  There is SO MUCH to DO.)

girlie

In which we peep Chora, Naxos

Firstly, an update: We are leaving Austin two weeks from tomorrow and have yet to get our visas, though the harried woman who answered the phone at the Italian consulate yesterday did tell me, "It is a matter of days."  Unfortunately, she didn't say whether it's a matter of 2 days or 12...

Well, let's look at happier things that aren't making me tear my hair out!

June 18, 2004 (ahem...):  Naxos Town.

This was the day for exploring Chora, Naxos' main town.  Many of the islands all around Greece have main towns named Chora or Hora (Naxos, Paros, Mykonos...)- so if a friend tells you they visited Chora, Greece, force their vague butts to clarify.

Naxos' Hora looked very different from Fira, on Santorini.  The streets had a more Arabic feel, perhaps due to the long Turkish occupation - they were much narrower, for one thing, and really byzantine in their twists.  (Here's a brief history of Naxos, if you're interested.)  Many a time I'd be looking down the street we were walking on and think "That street can't actually turn directly under that building... can it?"

But it can, and it did. 

The old Venetian center of Hora, where we were wandering, had a pronounced medieval feel.

We were wandering the district almost by ourselves - though there were a lot of cats around - probably because it was the hottest part of the day.  We were extra happy about this, though; again, a nice change from Santorini, where in the middle of the day you had to edge your way through the crowds, occasionally throwing the discreet elbow.

At some point during our walk, I decided that Husbear was being too stingy with the camera, so I distracted him (probably by saying "Look, that restaurant serves citron!") and commenced thievery.

Somehow, I even managed to get him to pose with me!

(Please excuse the hat hair.  It was HOT.)

Though I thought I was doing a great job with the little camera, Husbear started angling to get it back.

First, he tried saying "please" a lot.  Like THAT ever works!  (Note the giant bottle of water.)

When this didn't work, he moved to intimidation.  (When you look at that shot, please keep in mind I was flipping him off while laughing at the time...)

I finally acquiesced and returned the camera, so Husbear could take pictures of "Naxos."  I figured we had enough closeups of my face for one trip.

We walked through some more tunnels

and stumbled on a church straight out of Tatooine.  (Kind of like the moisture farm on which Luke Skywalker grew up.  Just trust me...)

This was one of the few churches we've seen where girls were actually not allowed in if they were wearing tank tops!  The inside was lovely and blessedly cool... and too dark to photograph.

We were getting a mite peckish at this point, and decided to walk down to the harbor and grab a snack and some ouzo at one of the many ouzeries along the beach.  On the way, we stopped into a tiny shop to grab some wine for later, before dinner.  (Looking back on our honeymoon, I realize we kind of sound like alcoholics... but it was our honeymoon!)

The white wine we bought came in a 1.5 liter ribbed plastic bottle, which I am certain held water directly before its reincarnation as a wine receptacle.  It cost 5 euros, and wasn't half bad.

We spent quite a bit of time in this jammed shop - they were packed to the rafters with local products, from long cinnamon bark to honey, dishes, wine, and obviously lots and lots of baskets.  There were several different kinds of new and aged cheeses, as well.

Being in there only served to whet our appetite further, so we grabbed our purchases and skedaddled down to the beach.

There are many ouzeries lining the beach, and some of them like to display their specialties out front.  I had heard that ouzo with grilled octopus is a really great match, so I was on the lookout.

In retrospect, I probably should have chosen this place for my octopus and ouzo, but I didn't.  The place we ended up was empty (but it was like 5 o'clock, prime not dinner hour) but had extremely persistent touts. 

The octopus was served with skordalia (here, potato-based, with strong garlic flavor) and a lemon chunk.  It was, unfortunately, quite dry and chewy, as I recall.  And the ouzo was a bit much for me - very edgy and sharp, with a robust liquorice flavor.  Husbear was all about the ouzo, but declined the octopus due to his veggie sensibilities.

After I finished my double O snack (octopus?  ouzo?  ha ha?) we dropped our bags back at the hotel and walked over to the Portara, Naxos' definitive landmark.  It's the only chunk left of an enormous temple to Apollo that was built on a little spit of land stretching out into the sea.  (This little island is traditionally regarded as the one Ariadne threw herself off of to get away from Dionysus.)

The view back to Hora from the little peninsula was lovely, with the sunset giving everything a warm pink-orage glow.

We got a nice person to take a picture of us in front of the actual portara.  Locals say the only reason the Venetians didn't take these blocks of marble is that they were too heavy to move.

The Portara also frames the view out to sea, with the sunset behind it.

It's a really distinctive monument, and the residents of Naxos are in my mind totally right to be so proud of it.

It for now (I have to go pack a box or two before we leave!).  Next time - we explore the wider island on a moped named Dionysus, and find a man carved out of a giant piece of rock.

girlie

Goodbye, Santorini; Yo, Naxos!

I KNOW it's been like a week (more, now) since our last post, but you're going to have to cut us a little slack - we are packing to move out of the country, after all!  Husbear's parents are coming into town this weekend, and they're bringing a large vehicle equipped with an even larger trailer, so most of our house is currently missing under a giant pile of boxes and garbage bags.  We did have some excitement last weekend, when someone (ahem) accidentally carried a wasp nest into the house, but since these were the wussiest wasps I've ever seen, the outcome was not nearly as horror-movie as it could have been.  (Care to take a guess how many individual wasp nests were stuck to different areas of our porch?  At last count, SEVEN.  Anyway.)

Though we did have a rather late night prior to leaving Santorini, we were still up and out for an early morning ferry to Naxos.  We strapped on our backpacks and caught a bus to Santorini's port, Athinios.

After a short wait, our ferry arrived.  We boarded and waved goodbye to Santorini, one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen.

(If you look closely, you can see the path people and donkeys take from the old port up to Fira.)

The ferry was actually pretty pimp, and very comfortable.  We grabbed a table and an order of fries - well, we were hungry.  The fries came with a tiny plastic fork.  How civilized!  This way, we didn't get grease and mayo and ketchup (American sauce) all over our grubby sausage-fingers.

The ferry ride was short.  We stopped briefly (at Paros, maybe?) before arriving in Naxos.

We pulled into the port, right near the island's main town of Hora (Many Greek islands call their main town Hora, in fact).  The approach to Naxos was not nearly as dramatic as the one to Santorini - but really, I'm not sure anything is, so you can't hold that against it. 

We hopped off of the ferry and headed towards town.

Some sort of construction project, I believe - looks really similar to the signs you see by the side of the road around here, "$250 billion of your tax dollars are going to build this toll road, which we will then charge you to use."

Our hotel, Chateau Zevgoli, was really easy to find in the tangle of narrow roads making up the old town of Hora.  Signs tacked to the corners of buildings pointed the way to various sights, hotels, and restaurants. 

The inside of the hotel was an oasis, all cool marble and plants and sunlight.  We came to find out that Naxos is positively stuffed with beautiful marble.  (wait until I get to talking about Apiranthos!)

Our room was lovely and relaxing, with marble floors and a little courtyard.

After freshening up a bit, we went up to the hotel's rooftop garden to check out the view - which was spectacular.  Dangit.

We could see out over the rooftops, past the portara (the only chunk remaining of a once - impressive temple to Apollo, plundered by the Venetians to build their castle atop Hora) to the sea.  It was one of those moments when you think to yourself, "it is not possible for me to be standing here, seeing this."

After we shook the cognitive dissonance, we realized we were getting pretty hungry.  Looking through our guidebook, we found a restaurant called Lucullus which had been open since 1908.  Figuring they had to be pretty good, we wandered through the tiny streets towards the restuarant.

First, we had to run the gauntlet of touts trying to get us into their restaurants - no biggie, except this time the restaurant across from Lucullus was a little pushier than normal.  While Lucullus' sign boasts that they are the oldest restaurant in the area, this restaurant had a sign emphasizing that they were the oldest family-run restaurant in town.  We smelled a rivalry!

The rivalry smelled like really wonderful tasty food.

At Lucullus, the sons run the front of the house, Mom cooks in the back, and Grandma fills in.  That's Grandma's home-made sheep's-milk cheese on the salad!

Lucullus had great food.  We ordered a good sampling of the vegetarian choices on the menu, including the aforementioned fresh and wonderful salad, an eggplant salad (melitzanosalata) with pomegranate seeds, a lovely and comforting milk soup, skordalia (a nut/potato/garlic dip, the ingredients of which vary across the country), beet salad, bread, and wine.

As we sat, eating and oohing and aahing, suddenly we began to hear a series of worrisome noises.  First, barking; then yelling and crashing.  The waiters in our restaurant all ran out into the street, one of them grabbing a pizzle (a whip made from the dessicated penis of a bull, of course!) off the wall as he tore out of the building.  Husbear also ran out into the street, to see what was going on - I could see him through the window, but was unable to see what was happening outside.

The yelling and clatter continued from outside - then I heard a particularly loud and resounding crash (complete with tinkling sound at the end), and Husbear turned and ran back into the restaurant.  A few seconds later, one of Lucullus' waiters came back into the restaurant, holding his hand to his face - right behind him, another waiter with his hand over his nose.  The restaurant's front-house manager (the son, mentioned above) walked back in and apologized to all of us, saying "But, you have to understand, they were speaking about my mother.  In Greece, you do not do this!" Of course, we all nodded in quick agreement.

While outside, Husbear saw one man get thrown into the restaurant across the street, landing on a table between two very surprised diners (who were apparently not very quick on the uptake).  A trio of Australians converged on the fight from three different directions, rolling up their sleeves and demanding to know if anyone needed their help.  Dogs and men were tangling everywhere.  I'm glad I stayed in the restaurant!

For our "trouble", everyone eating at Lucullus that night got a free glass of a dessert wine made on Naxos. 

All in all - a great meal, though I can't say I recommend the floor show.  (Ha.  Ha.  Ha.)  Really, the people at Lucullus were wonderful, and anyone who talked smack about the woman making that wonderful, wonderful food definitively deserved a beatdown.

Next time: we tour the center of Hora, see lots of kitties, and check out the Portara in the fading light.

girlie

In which the newlyweds' restaurant luck runs out, and they learn about Greeks

Husbear called me last night from work and asked me a difficult question.

"Do you realize that your first honeymoon post was published on August 4th of 2005?"

I can't say I'm entirely sure where he was going with that line of questioning.  He was probably just drawing attention to how pleased he is with the quality of the honeymoon posts... right?

So, ten months later, let me present you with post #15, about our last day before leaving Santorini for Naxos.

Since our visit to the archaeological site of Akrotiri was less than successful, it was really important to both of us to visit Santorini's archaeological museum.  The small museum was packed to the rafters with the usual suspects: Japanese tourists videotaping each display case, inch by inch; sunburned groups of Americans loudly asking each other, "Whatzat?  Why would I want to look at a giant pot?"; harried museum guides clucking, tutting, and begging people not to use the flash on their camera.

All this aside, the museum did have some lovely artifacts on display. 

There's apparently a theory that the inhabitants of Santorini had some level of warning that the volcano in the center of the island was going to erupt; the fact that this small gold antelope (?) is the most valuable item found so far by the archaeologists is one of the pieces of evidence used to support this theory.

I insisted we go back to Taverna Nikolas for one last Santorini lunch.

One whole grilled fish, a liter of house white wine, and a very happy girlie later, we headed back in the direction of our hotel.

The Hotel Loucas has a truly stunning pool; we spent a few hours there relaxing, using the water to avoid the heat of the day.

We worked on negating the farmer's-tan effect of the long walk to Ia two days prior, read books, swam... lovely.

For our last night on the island, we planned to go check out the resort town of Kamari and then catch a showing of the movie Troy (The Greek posters call Brad Pitt MPrant, due to the apparent Greek lack of the letter B) at an outdoor theater.  Sounds fun, right?

First, our last Santorini sunset.

Kamari is on the side of the island opposite the caldera - see this map for reference.  (Kamari is near the airport.)  It attracts a completely different crowd than Fira, or Ia, or Firostephani - it's a bit more geared towards families and package tourists.

Kamari did have a nice beachfront, with many restaurants of the menu-in-six-languages variety; we read in Frommer's that a place called Camille Stephani had these places all beat, and was worth a trip to the town inand of itself.

After being served a wide variety of choices from their menu by a waiter who was 1. the only waiter working the entire restaurant and 2. obviously embarassed to be serving food with this complete lack of quality, I can't say I agreed with our trusty guidebook.

I'd say we sampled a pretty good tour of their menu; dolmas, tomato keftedes, many dips and veggies.  Yeah, we were pretty fair... and Camille Stephani just wasn't very good.

Of course, the next table over was occupied by four very large, very drunk Germans who smoked and yelled at their enormous Labrador retreiver for the entire duration of our meal - so maybe our experience was influenced a little by that?

Anyway, a little disappointed - but full, at least, we headed back down the beach to walk to Cine Kamari, the outdoor theater we had heard about.

We passed a lovely church on the way.

I think our experience at Cine Kamari was probably the best introduction to the Greek culture that we could have had.  The movie was scheduled to begin sometime around midnight, as I recall; this was a bit of a stretch for us, as we had an early morning ferry to Naxos to catch.  However, you're only young once, right?

Anyway, we arrived at the theater proably a half-hour before the scheduled start of the movie.  The ticket booth was empty, as was the area around the theater; we could see bits of the previous showing through the trees, so we knew we were in the right place.  We set up camp near the ticket booth and waited.

The scheduled time for the movie came and went.  Still nobody in the ticket booth.  More and more people started showing up; nobody, however, got in line with us.  Every few minutes, each clot of people would send a representative up to near where we were standing; he (always he) would stand in front of us, look at the ticket booth, look at us, read all the posters around the ticket booth, lean against the wall for a minute, and go back to his friends.

After another fifteen minutes of this, we decided to retreat a bit, figuring we could always get back in line if anyone ever showed up at the ticket booth.  We moved back a little and watched the prospective patrons watching the front of the theater.  Slowly, the group representatives started ambling over in the direction of the ticket window; again, they'd look at the ticket window (some would knock on it) read the posters, lean on the wall; they just projected this image of "Line? Who, me?  Why would I be in line?"  Soon, however, a proto-line began to form; people were getting in line in the middle, not the end, however.  There were many clucks of disapproval from the unfortunate men who were maneuvered further back; after each cluck, they'd step out of the back of the line and get in the middle.

Fascinating as this was (and it really was - I'd never seen a line like it!) we eventually left, a full hour after the movie was scheduled to begin.  We grabbed a taxi and headed back to our hotel.

I'm a little sad we didn't stay... but we did get entertainment, at least.  And we rented Troy several months after we got home, and I can't really say we missed that much not seeing it in Greece.

Next: Naxos!  Plus, Husbear is almost involved in a streetfight, through no fault of his own.

Archaeology and Wine go together like Peas and Carrots

Santorini isn't just stunning views and beautiful vistas.  It's also an island of import to archaeologists and the site of an eons-old wine tradition.

It was time for us to take a day to learn all we could about these two pursuits.

So that's not a very long time to become an expert on ancient history, or wine - that didn't stop us from getting back on our little leggies and setting off to perhaps one of the most important archaeological sites anywhere, ancient Akrotiri.

Akrotiri is known as the "Minoan Pompeii," because it was buried by a volcano (same as Pompeii) - the same one that blew out the center of the island circa 1650 BCE.

We were really excited to see the buildings, which from all accounts are remarkably preserved.  When we showed up, though, we were told admission would be free because of the construction going on on the giant UV-protecting roof/cover.

So, this is what the ancient site of Akrotiri looked like to us:

We couldn't see anything.  I tried matching up the little bits of what we could see with the descriptions in my book, but nothing doing.

(sadly, in September of 2005, the roof - which had been under construction since 1999 - collapsed, killing a British tourist and injuring several tourists and workers.)

So, unfortunately, we weren't able to get too much out of our visit to Akrotiri.  But - it was free!

Leaving the site, we hailed a cab.  "Take us to Boutari!" we cried.  (follow that link, click on wineries, then click on santorini.  Stupid inability to permalink.)

And he did.

And we ordered two tasting flights of Boutari's wine.

Which came with olives and cheese and tomatoes and dry crackery bread for palate-cleansing.

It was a little surprising, how much wine they put in front of us.  Some we liked more than others, and we hadn't heard of the grapes most of them were made of.  I enjoyed them all.

After Boutari set the bar, we thought we'd walk back into town to try Santo Wines.  Of course, this ended up being a longer walk than we were expecting, but we were used to that by now...

Hi, donkey!

We passed a vineyard, which was very different from those we saw in Italy.

On Santorini, they twist all the vines around each other and grow the grapes in the basket created by the leaves and vines.  This protects the grapes from the relentless sun and winds.

Though tour buses passed us every, oh, thirty seconds or so, the area where we were actually walking seemed to be inhabited by the people who honest-and-for-real live on the island.

(Note that, by this time, I had wisened up and bought a hat.)

This is apparently a car repair shop.  (Thanks, Leda, for the translation!)

We did finally make it to Santo Wines, our buzz from Boutari having quite worn off.

The tasting building and shop run by Santo Wines is set in a building with a beautiful view north towards Fira.  I really wanted to like these guys - it's apparently a collective run by some of the grape-growers on the island.  I always do like supporting the little guy!

Again, we ordered too much wine.  We were definitely not expecting each glass to be so full!

We struck up a conversation with the guy at the table next to us, who happened to be from Fort Lauderdale Florida - the same town my grandparents live in.

He offered to take our picture as we sat with our wine.

As he took our picture, he said "You have plenty of shots of the two of you - you need one of the view!"

Well - O.K... this pic does show you the lovely view from Santo Wines, though.

Our reaction to Santo Wines was a little different than our reaction to Boutari.  While a couple of the wines were nice, for the most part they were really unbalanced - sweet yet sharp, not a good combination.

Disappointed, we left to catch a cab to Art Space, in the small town of Exo Gonia.  We heard that this place was a gallery which had a nice selection of wines you could try while looking at perhaps a few pieces of art.

Well - it was emphatically NOT that, in that it was much, much more interesting.

Adonis, the owner, welcomed us enthusiastically to the cave-like gallery.  We were only able to take one picture before he asked us to stop, and we respected his wishes.  (there are a bunch of pictures if you follow the art space link above, though.)

As it turned out, Adonis ran a gallery in an extremely old building that used to be a winery.  He had some old wine-making equipment, along with what he called the oldest remaining traditional tomato paste maker in all of Greece.  The gallery was full of the art of up-and-coming Greek artists, and Adonis was very knowledgeable about these artists, along with the history of Santorini and Greece in general.

He was a very interesting guy, who we were lucky to meet.

Then - he offered us some of his homemade vin santo to taste (the Santorini kind, not the Tuscan kind), just bottled and without a label yet.  It was wonderful!  So... we bought a bottle.  We are waiting for a special occasion to open it up- perhaps a second anniversary?  Hmmmm....

Next time - the archaeological museum of Santorini, and perhaps the worst meal we had in Greece.

girlie