Callie and Kulla headed off to church WAY too early this morning. No thanks!
Breakfast, then off in search of the Dimitras Temple, sort of in the central part of Western Naxos.
Then, all the way down the west coat to the roads end at Aliko, where there are beautiful beaches with fine white sand. And many potatos being grown! Naxos is known for its potatoes.
We have a very late lunch at one of the few tavernas open so early in the season. We had some good roasted pork. And some not-so-good lamb (but as it turned out, Kulla had ordered goat, not lamb, because they were out of lamb. ah well). The salad was really good — FRESH. Indeed, we saw one of the taverna guys run out to the garden and pick some fresh oregano. That’s fresh!
As we make our way north, there is more development. Beautiful places to live and vacation, although we’re still a bit early. This might be a great place to be in late September/early August, although I wouldn’t want to be in the middle of it during high season.
The beach at Ag. Anna was just stunning. We’d been warned by Pete that it was stunning. It was.
Back to the hotel after a full day. NAP TIME! Well, almost. We had told Alexander we might want ot stay an extra night. He called us to verify this, as he had an inquiry about the rooms. We decided to keep them another day. Callie got back to sleep just fine. I stayed up to update my journal and such (although the entries are becoming much more shorthand — hey, you can’t spend all your time documenting the stay in Greece).
NAP OVER — up and about to wander in the village. We figured out via a helpful man at a local market that we could buy a COSMOTE sim and cards to add money to it to save a bit on local wireless phone calls. Callie spoke rusty Greek to him (which the locals really seem to appreciate) and he spoke rusty English back to us (which I appreciated).
During our wandering, we noted a fish grill/ouzeri that was very busy, and made a note to return later.
Back to pick up ZiZi (Kulla was crashed out for the night), and headed back to the ouzeri. We ordered calamari and cod. Callie was ordering, and didn’t get fillets (Kulla usually thinks of these things for us). They were still delicious little fishies! It was just prepared a bit like some folks cook perch and crappie in Oklahoma. We had a half kilo of Naxian white win from the barrel — so good that we had a second carafe. The proprietor seemed sad when we asked for the check and tried to talk us into a third carafe. I think he enjoyed that we were carrying on and making his place more lively.
On our way back, we stopped for a nightcap at Med Bar. The music seemed more Cuban/Caribbean, but whatever. The red wine was awful. Should have had the 5-Euro-all-day frozen strawberry daiquiris.
BED.