Summer with a capital "S"

Sunset with Apollo

Temple to Apollo after dinner tonight...

Naxos Town

The architecture here on Naxos is the postcard perfect version of Cycladic Greece, with its narrow passages and blue trimmed white wash.  This week we're in a small apartment in Naxos Town, and we stroll a few hundred feet down a narrow alley to St. George beach. This protected, crystal clear cove has good sand and hundreds of feet of shallow water so it's a great spot for people with kids.

We spend our days on the beach, and our evenings exploring the old town called Bourgos.

Night ferry

On Sunday we put our bags in storage behind the front desk, spent the day on the beach at Ammos, showered in the spa room, collected our bags again, said goodbye to our first stop in Greece and headed on for a new adventure just after dinner.  Meaning, we took the overnight ferry!  At a very young age I swore I'd never board a cruise ship (thanks to the makers of the Black Stallion movie) and I fully intended to stick by that pledge my whole life.  It turns out the night ferry is JUST like a cruise ship.  Whoops.  And we lived!  I had planned to board the boat and immediately locate life jackets, but the Greeks were one step ahead of me with the jackets permanently stored in the sleeping cabins.

These ferries in Greece are unlike anything I've experienced before, and I'm glad we tried them. But even as giant and as smooth as they are, the engines make a considerable vibration and by the second ferry, two of us needed a small dose of Dramamine. We disembarked the night ferry at 6am, walked across the port and caught our 5 hour ferry ride to Naxos at 7:30am.

That's the moon coming up.

And here we are in the morning boarding the second ferry...

Our seats inside the ferry to Naxos.

My view of Crete

We've settled into the laziness of long days by the sea quite expertly, the three of us. I pile the tabouli, beans, and spinach pies on my breakfast plate.  We swim.  We read.  We eat cucumbers and cheese and cold cuts.  We swim. We read. We order drinks and chocolate cake. We sun and read and swim some more before finding dinner and a sunset. My memories of Crete will be dominated by the beautiful environment our hoteliers have created in Ammos.  Here...

Xania doings

For 9 euro round trip we can catch the city bus from our neighborhood, into the old downtown.  We've done this twice: once to buy new swimsuits, the other for dinner and a look around the harbor and markets.

The rest of the time, we can be found either by the pool or the sea.