Greece 2022 - Day 8: Last ferry to Naxos!
Today wins the award for the earliest “get up and go” time since arriving in Greece. We were up at 4am to pack up, clean up, leave Chania and make the 2- hour drive to Heraklion to catch our 8am ferry to Naxos. We made it to the Port of Heraklion a few minutes after 7am. We had previously made arrangements with our car rental company to meet us at 7:30am to hand over the keys and finalize anything that needed finalizing with the rental car. They had agreed to meet us no earlier than 7:30am assuring us we would have lots of time to board the ferry and depart. We waited until 7:40am with no sign of anyone from Auto Rentals Crete. That was when I made a panicked phone call to the owner of the rental company. He answered somewhat groggily and seemed confused saying that the meeting time was 9am. Thankfully, I had paperwork to prove the drop off time was, in fact 7:30am. He told us to leave keys under the driver’s side floor mat and lock the door, so we did. Then, we sprinted for our Sea Jets ferry that was chomping at the bit to leave. We made it aboard, left our luggage in the car bay with the hundreds of other bags, and found our seats up on deck. The ferry made a hasty departure with about 10 minutes of boarding. These ferries wait for no one!
We grabbed some coffees, yogurt and Baklava from the ships café and settled in for the 3-hour and 45-minute journey to Naxos (with a quick pit stop at Santorini to off load a tour bus).
We landed in Naxos right on time. After another D-Day style landing where we had about 10 minutes from the time of the announcement that the ferry was arriving at the port to get down to the car bay and grab our luggage and run off the ferry before the boat pulled away with the ramp still retracting as it went, we were deposited in the Port of Naxos. These ferries wait for no one!
We easily found our Airbnb just a short 800 m walk away in a super quiet neighborhood. We waited a few minutes at street level before a very sweet older lady came down and signaled us to come in. We didn’t catch her name, but she was the mother-in-law of the owner of our apartment. She spoke very little English, but through lots of hand gestures and miming, we were able to communicate very well with her to understand the basics of the apartment. The apartment itself is amazing. We once again lucked out with two beautiful balconies for enjoying the outdoors. The place is so quiet and peaceful with the only sound outside being chirping birds and the odd scooter passing by.
After changing into some shorts, we set out to explore the main town of Naxos. We wandered around our neighborhood, then weaved our way up and down and in and out of the narrow streets of the traditional Cycladic town. We stopped at a little specialty food store to buy some olives and traditional Greek mountain tea. Many of the shops were closed for midday siesta.
After 2 hours and nearly 5 km of walking, we headed back to the apartment, stopping at a small, well-stocked marked to purchase some breakfast supplies and snacks. Back at the apartment, we indulged in a much-needed siesta of our own. After a refreshing nap, we sat on the deck and enjoyed a glass of wine and some nibblies while deciding where to eat this evening.
We retraced our steps from earlier and went to a little
taverna called Metaxi Mas on one of the back streets of the old town of Naxos. The food was delightful. We started with Koloithokeftedes (fried zucchini
balls), then we shared our daily Greek salad.
For our mains, I had the shrimp saganaki, while Ian tried the
Papoutsakia (stuffed eggplants).
Everything was exceptionally flavorful!
And, of course, there were street kittens to keep us
entertained as we ate. I may have
slipped the odd piece of shrimp here an there!
Comments
Post a Comment