Friday 29th May
Maggie and Richard arrive at Earls Court today, fresh off the Piccadilly Line from Kings Cross. They’re acting cool but I can tell – they’re trying to hide their bursting excitement about our pending Greek Island Adventure on Naxos, starting tomorrow!
It’s a lovely sunny day and we spend the afternoon in the garden. Angela D arrives to join us and there are gins and tonics and plenty of social catching-ups to be had.
By the end of the afternoon Richard is showing signs of curry-deficiency, so we take an early-evening hike all the way to Marsala Zone. According to Google Directions it’s 253 feet away and the fastest route takes 1 minute whether by car, by bike, or on foot. Easily do-able. And enjoyable.
[Incidentally, Google will also, in a couple of seconds, plot you a very detailed walking route from Earl’s Court to Naxos covering the 1,847 miles in 402 hours – just in case that’s of interest for the future.]
Saturday 30th May
Our trusty Uber arrives at 6:30 am to take us to Heathrow. We’ve been looking forward to a nice breakfast in the BA lounge but it’s somewhat of a disappointment. The fruit is good, but the cooked breakfast is tasteless, and the bread arrives in pre-toasted batches so it’s cold by the time it’s buttered. I know this might sound a bit picky but we discover that it’s almost impossible to butter toast on British Airways plates – narrow dishes designed so that the toast can’t lie flat. We wonder why they don’t have normal plates like everyone else.
I did warn you it would sound picky.
The flight itself is more or less on time and we arrive at Santorini at 3:30, just enough time to get our bags and meet up with the taxi at 4pm. It’s a fairly short drive up the hill to the top of the caldera and a dramatic descent to the port on the other side.
We have time to kill before our ferry so we have a late lunch at the busiest of the restaurants along the port. We eat all the Greek cooking that we’ve been looking forward to – the food that tells us that here we are – back on a Greek island again. And for a restaurant at the port with a captive audience, the food is the Greek quality we’ve come to expect.
But we are not yet on our holiday island – that comes at the end of the next leg – the 90 minutes ferry ride to Naxos via Ios. It’s an elderly ferry, well beyond retirement age, with windows that were not designed to be looked through so there’s little to be seen along the way. But it’s on time and reasonably fast for an old-timer, and we are soon at the port in Naxos searching for the taxi sent from the hotel.
The taxi, eventually tracked down, takes us to our hotel – The Iria Beach Art hotel twenty minutes away. In these days of slick marketing and fake news I’ve become (just a little) cynical, so I’m relieved to find that the ‘Iria Beach Art Hotel’ is actually quite Arty and is definitely ‘On the Beach’ – at least as close as you can get. Maria, the friendly lady at reception meets us with Loukoumi – the tasty Greek Delights – and a strange green drink that tastes like concentrated liquid loukoumi.
Then it’s up to our rooms which are large and comfortable, each with a trendy-looking step curving nicely around the sleeping quarters. No doubt the hotel retained a well-paid interior designer to create this fashionable layout. It does look cool but it’s not long before we mark it out as a danger zone. I trip on the step shortly after we arrive, and it’s a hazard that is still catching us out at the end of the holiday.
Amply sated by our Santorini lunch we have a relaxing liquid dinner just a few steps away on the beach, admiring the sunset across the bay.
Sunday 31st May
A very chilled-out day. Apart from a solitary jog and a quick swim in the sea before breakfast, we move no more than a few steps from the hotel the whole day. Next to the hotel is a bar with comfortable-looking sunbeds right on the beach. The charge for the sunbed is, generously, offset against any food and drink so, provided you stay and consume (which we do) the bed is free for the whole day. Chris, the guy at the bar, looks after us well and the beers keep coming with little effort from us.
In the evening we feast on freshly-caught fish at the restaurant next door and stumble back to our rooms. On the way in I trip up on that annoyingly trendy step.
Monday 1st June
We’d got this great idea of hiring a beach buggy for the four of us and seeing some of the island. A nice idea after a few drinks the night before. But in practice…….
The warning sign is there when the front seat detaches itself from its mooring to the body of the buggy. But we ignore the warning, find out how to encourage it back into place, and off we go.
To be fair, there are only three things wrong with the buggy: – it’s extremely slow, incredibly noisy, and very uncomfortable. But it’s Margaret who eventually points out to the rest of us that these three things are actually key to a successful day’s outing. There’s a huge sense of relief that one of us has actually framed this into words and we all unanimously agree, telling ourselves we were all about to say exactly the same thing.
We head back the way we came. We are anticipating that there could be a debate about a refund but instead we get an offer to replace the buggy with a car (with seats and doors and all mod cons) for two days for the same price! We jump at the offer and within minutes we are in the car – smiles all round and relishing in the comfort of just sitting in it at this stage before we even start the engine.
It’s down the coast to one of those bakeries that the Greeks are so good at where the variety of tempting pastries makes choice difficult. Coffee and cakes all round.
Then up the island to Chalki in the hills. We find a nice-looking restaurant on the main street and have lunch. We meet a friendly Canadian/American family with three generations at the table – artist Gregory, his third wife, her daughter and son-in-law and their baby. Gregory shows us his web site and tells (warns?) us his son-in-law is an anti-Carney Trump supporter.
We drive back to Plaka beach (in what is still feeling like a flash motor) and along the road by the beach to Agia Anna. Last time we were here – a lifetime ago – this was a lovely long uncrowded avant-garde hippy beach where we spent many happy hours drinking cheap red wine, swimming, and relaxing in the sun. This new beach, covered in sunbeds, is backed up with the full complement of bars, restaurants, hotels, car-rentals, and people.
In the evening we eat at ‘Paradiso’, ten minutes’ walk from our hotel at the start of Plaka beach.
The place is heaving when we arrive, we haven’t booked, and there’s no table. But this is Greece, so no matter. A waiter pops out the back of the restaurant and brings us a table – right to where we are standing. A few minutes later the lady who seems to be in charge (one of ‘the family’ we later discover) decides the table isn’t big enough for us, so she pops out the back and carries another table out for us to add to the one we got earlier. They have a fiercely efficient process going on here, feeding hoards of people at pace with punters overflowing the restaurant and spreading along the beach. The starters are good, but the process gets a little too efficient when our main courses arrive just as we are starting on the starters. And the main courses are not so good. So, ten out of ten for service, friendliness and efficiency, five out of ten for food quality. We’ll try somewhere else tomorrow.
Tuesday 2nd June
Off in the lovely car again – me driving this time – all the way up the coast to Apollonas about as far north as you can go on the island. Down the narrow road to the port and coffee at the first café by the sea. We pretty much have the place to ourselves – no one else has ventured up north so far today.
Then we’re off to Lyonas bay. As we arrive in the car park the guy at the Delfinaki restaurant waves to us. Clearly this is his technique to get us committed to lunch at his place before we leave. It works. We’re soon heading up the steps to the restaurant and we’re hooked. He must be the patriarch of the family, not needed for cooking or serving or even taking the cash anymore so he’s found himself a nice niche latching on to the punters and then giving them the full family history complete with photograph albums to help tell the story. We see him as a young boy and also in the local Emery Mine – unique to Naxos and the original ingredient of the famous Emery Paper. His lunch is good too, although we would have been very happy with half portions.
Then it’s back to our temporary ‘home’, hand back our lovely car, and in the evening pizzas at the snack bar by the hotel where the grandma sits, rarely moving, usually smiling and holding the baby.
Wednesday 3rd June
June 3rd – my mum’s birthday today. She’ll be very happy looking down to see us all having a nice time on holiday together.
On the bus to Naxos town. Drinks at a café on the front which we make the mistake of going back to for lunch. It turns out to be the worst meal of the week – whyever did we think that the Greeks could make crepes like they do in Normandy? Thick stodgy bases with tasteless filling bursting out. But the beer is good.
We wander the streets looking at jewellery shops but never buying. Richard and Maggie do get dangerously close to a €2,500 necklace that we all (with the questionable exception of Richard?) agree would suit Maggie nicely. But we do have a good chat to the lady in the shop reminiscing about Naxos in those bohemian days 30-odd years or so ago, although she claims, questionably, that she was just a child at the time.
In another jewellery shop the closest the helpful lady gets to doing business with us is mending my sunglasses free of charge. We’re a miserly crew today.
We climb further up the Naxos streets and alleyways and virtually circumnavigate the castle. We are searching for the ‘Art Café’ where there’s jazz on this Friday. We’re convinced it’s around here somewhere but eventually abandon the search. It turns out – we discover later – that the Art Café is not in Naxos town at all but a very short distance from our hotel in Agia Anna!
It’s hot and we need to neutralise the after-taste of those crepes. An ice cream is called for and Margaret and I are attracted by the tempting look of the ‘Dubai Chocolate’ Ice. It’s delicious. The ‘Dubai’ influences on the traditional chocolate ice cream are the pistachio flavouring and the kataifi – toasted and shredded filo pastry providing a crunchy texture. Meanwhile Maggie and Richard are settled in the bus for the return journey. We rush to join them but the driver won’t have us on his bus brandishing dangerous-looking ice cream cones so we are ejected and wave farewell – for now – to Maggie and Richard.
Abandoned, we relax on a bus-stop bench enjoying our gelatos and wait for the next bus which soon comes along, and it’s back to the hotel.
In the evening we eat again at Palatio restaurant right next to the hotel. Margaret and I share a delicious sea-bass.
Thursday 4th June
Another bus ride today – this time to the end of Plaka beach and a sweaty walk, part sand, part road, to Mikri Vigla. We expect to find a village at the end but there’s only beaches and a bar by the road where everything is self-service and there’s a cute dog for entertainment.
Margaret and I decide to walk back to Plaka and Maggie and Richard wait for the bus. We later hear that the bus journey was what used to be called a ‘mystery tour’ for Blackpool holidaymakers and took them to remote parts of the island and eventually landed them back in Naxos town. Great value at €2 each.
In the evening we eat at Santona – a modern restaurant with a DJ playing great music, without a single Nana Mouskouri or Demis Roussos tune. Panos, our black-coated waiter, is very helpful but still brings our main courses soon after we are into our starters. But it’s a nice meal – black pork and crispy potatoes for me – and we watch the perfectly executed sunset across the bay.
Friday 5th June
It should be a good final full day of the holiday but nothing seems to turn out quite as it should. We hire another car and head for Moutsouna beach on the east side of the island, not yet visited. The mountain range makes it one way in and one way out on this part of the island. There’s the remains of the skyway track for moving emery from the top of the mountain to Moutsana port.
Coffee here, and then it’s on to the furthest point we can drive to – Panormus. It looks like the beach here would be very nice but just as we arrive it rains very heavily. (Still a lovely day on the rest of Naxos we discover later). We skip the beach and drive back to Apollonas where we have a nice, always reliable, mezze for lunch. Then back down the coast, through Naxos town, and we hand the car back early.
Margaret and I go for a walk towards Plaka and stop for a beer at a restaurant on the beach. We think this might be a good place to eat here tonight so we ask the waiter about booking a table but explain that we need to check with our friends first. He says to book the table and it’s fine if we don’t turn up. Before leaving I check with him that we aren’t going to get into trouble with the Greek Mafia if we don’t turn up. He tells us, perhaps half-jokingly, that he’s Albanian, not Greek, and that the Albanians have a bigger Mafia.
But the meal turns out to be not too good. The beef stifado surprisingly has eight large-ish onions, no other vegetables and none of the recognisably authentic stifado taste. Maybe it’s the Albanian influence?
On the positive side, Richard strikes up a conversation with the musician about the bouzouki-type instrument he is playing, and returns with a glint in his eye. I can see one of these instruments arriving in Kirton Lindsey before long.
The disappointment of the restaurant makes us all the more keen to move on to the jazz at the Art Café where there are specially reserved lounge seats awaiting us. But this is set to be the next disappointment of the day. We get there to find that the jazz singer has pneumonia so won’t be appearing. In an attempt to save the day, a friend of the owner has agreed to play the piano, and a stand-in singer is volunteering as we arrive. We stay and listen over gins and tonics but the singer is murdering ‘Summertime’ – a lovely song that normally holds me captivated. This rendition drives us out of the bar and to bed.
So – we’d spent the morning in the only rainy part of the island, ate an uninspiring dinner, and the jazz evening that we’d been looking forward to all week was cancelled. Not the best day of the holiday, but more than made up for by the other days. Oh, and I fell down the step going to the loo in the middle of the night.
Saturday 6th June
Home today. Lovely calm morning for a swim – the best one yet. Breakfast and taxi to the port. The ferry is late due to congestion at an earlier port. Now of course we can track it on our phone so Margaret and I sit and have a drink at a café until we see the ferry arriving. It’s a huge ferry carrying hundreds of people from Mykonos, most of them destined for Santorini like us. At Santorini if feels like thousands of people are flooding off the ferry and the port is chaos for a while. We just have time for mezze at our ‘usual’ restaurant before we make contact with our taxi driver and are whisked off to the airport the other side of the cliffs.
The BA flight is a little late and by the time we collect our luggage back at Heathrow we are pretty tired. There’s no Piccadilly line so we take the Elizabeth line to Paddington. It’s not easy with heavy suitcases to get to the District Line at Paddington but we are lucky that there’s a young guy who gallantly takes much of our luggage up and down the stairs for us. His girlfriend is impressed.
Home, wine, and bed! Which Greek Island next year?