Another tender port, today we are in Naxos, the largest of the Islands. We decided to take a tour today, so along with about twenty fellow guests we’re driven by coach round the island. The scenery and mountains are lovely, and we climb and wind around hairpins into the hills, to first stop at a distillery that makes a local drink from Kitron leaves. This plant is a tree the bears fruit like lemons, but they are huge and green and also have much thicker rind than lemons. However the leaves are very fragrant and it’s these that do all the work.
Although it’s not yet 10:00 I feel obliged to sample the wares, the citrus flavour is noticeable but is very different to limoncello, the Italian lemon liqueur. Didn’t buy any.
We next stop at the hillside town of Apeiranthos which is paved with marble, literally, as that was the predominant industry, alongside emery mining. Neither of these is still happening on a commercial scale, the town is now an elegant tourist trap.
Somehow we are all offered cake from a local shop, but we’re good and resist, unlike the rest of the bus. We then move on to a tiny archeological museum in town, showing items as old as 5000 years, and then on to a tiny folklore museum. We manage ten minutes before escaping to explore around the town in our own.
Final stop on the tour is a statue which went wrong. Being rather large, it’s been left to rest ever since, I suppose no-one wanted to bother stealing a 12 foot tall man with a broken leg! So for 2700 years he’s been lying there.
Returning to the pier in the town of Naxos, we left the others to go back for lunch, and walked around the harbour, and just around the corner is the start of a very large bay surrounded by sand beach and restaurants galore. It all seems very upmarket, and quite attractive, although we’d not long had our elevenses even though it was two hours past due, so we didn’t stop for lunch, and continued walking for a while, before being thwarted by an hotel’s security gate, so we turned around and walked back, this time aiming for the old town set on a hill. There’s a lot of steps and the usual higgledy-piggledy alleyways to navigate, but we managed despite Google maps getting hopelessly lost in the labyrinth, and found the church, castle and other bits we’d earmarked on our plan to visit.
Finally, we walked up the the famous Naxos Door - the only remaining bit of an unusual temple to Apollo. Unusual because it’s facing the wrong way, specifically the entrance looked West, whereas temples should look East to receive the morning sun. The rest has been stolen to build other things, the two columns and lintel are the only bits left because they each weigh seven tonnes and no-one could actually move them, thankfully for us.
By this time we’re getting hungry, so we take the tender back home, dash up to the Patio Grill and just make last orders, so get our first TK burger. The afternoon, or what’s left of it, is spent writing three blogs as I’m rather behind, doing a modest amount of work at my desk in Leeds via the magic of remote access, and having a short swim. There’s no time to catch up on photos though, before we hear back to get ready for Captain’s Welcome.
It sounds daft four days into the cruise, but this is yet another thing buggered up by the football, so we’re all Dinner Jackets and bow ties tonight, well, except the majority aren’t - as usual many of our cousins from two large places places begging with “A” cannot cut the moutard, but let’s not get into that rant yet again. Also there’s not many turned up to Captain’s Welcome, which I find rather insulting, is this another example of slipping standards I wonder? Cruise director and her assistant, Chelsey and Anna, took us by surprise by performing, beautifully I must say, the Flower Duet from Lakmé, it was stunning. If that doesn’t ring any bells, you might know it from the British Airways adverts.
It’s too early for dinner so we do a couple of miles around deck five, then pop up to the Observation Lounge near our room on deck ten for another drinkie, before dropping back down to deck four for dinner.
We both had twice baked cheese soufflé, Hubby had pear and cheese salad, then Beef Wellybob, I had truffle veluté then veal fillet minon. We both finished with the 30th anniversary desert, a chou pastry, lemon cream, sorbet and raspberry confection most enjoyable.
Showtime tonight is the Evening with Tim Rice we watched when he was on the ship in Antarctica creating the show. To hear it again, this time with his narration recorded, was great, and we think the singers even stronger this time. They loved this news when we greeted them afterwards.
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