Tuesday 16 May Naxos

Woke up late and enjoyed the sleep in. We are finding that we are eating late, getting to bed late, so being able to sleep late as well makes a nice change. Kids straight into the hotel pool after breakfast while we wondered about what to do, Thought about hiring some horses, but they were surprisingly expensive, given how cheap most things are in Greece, so we decided to hire some motorbikes instead. Again, we were surprised to find that they wouldn’t hire bikes out unless you had a drivers’ licence (so Greece does have some traffic laws, who would have thought!!). So we hired a small car, plus a small scooter type bike - 30 euros for the two of them for 24 hours (that’s about $40).

Had a fantastic day exploring the little villages around Naxos. There is a quite a mountainous region in the centre, including the highest point, Mt Zas, which we ascended to quite near the top, and then walked further up to a big cave. So easy to imagine the villagers all taking refuge in the cave while the marauding Turks and Venetians battled outside. The sound of wooden bells filled the air, and once we had worked out what we were looking for we could see big hairy goats skipping lightly up the almost vertical slopes.  Lovely big green lizards were everywhere. As the afternoon wore on, we came across old men escorting their herds of 10-15 goats home along the roads. We saw a marble quarry hacked out of a sheer mountain peak, and a cramped dairy farm of 50-60 cows in a bare dusty yard. We got home around 7pm, just in time for the kids to have another swim, and then back to the cafe at the end of the lane for tea - sigh, yet another late night, home to bed around 10.30. Tired and happy.

Swimming pool at Hotel Katerina - kids spent every spare moment here.

Give him a bike and he turns into a bikie ...

View of Naxos 

Spring at the start of the Mt Zas cave walking track

Mt Zas - a lot of marble around here. This is where they grow goats!

Isn't he beautiful!

Lunch at Halki

Street in Halki

Halki lady doing weaving on a massive loom

Typical Naxos landscape - Cycladic architecture and terraced olive groves

Filoti - biggest town on Naxos

Romy and me, with marble quarry in background

Icecreams with view

Naxos dairy farm