Friday, 24 May 2013

The Curious Kouros's


Thursday 23 May (Day 30)

While we were having breakfast this morning a young and attractive Greek lady arrived, asked me to put my shoes on and come with her.  I complied immediately but when she asked me for my driving license and credit card I realised that she had come to deliver our hire car.  Ah well, never mind.

We took the mountain road to the tiny hamlet of Appollon.  Before we arrived in Appollon we stopped to see two Kouros’s.  A Kouros is a male statue made from marble.  These were made 2,500 years ago and were thought to be accidentally broken on site so were never delivered.  Naxos was and is known for its marble hence the statues.

Appollon is a quaint seaside hamlet, we stopped there and read a while before heading back along the coastal road and stopping at an even larger Kouros.

By a happy coincidence we are in Naxos at the same time as the 15th Domus festival: http://naxosfestival.com/ so in the evening we went to a Jazz and Blues event.  Two guys were playing the piano, guitar and saxophone (two at a time obviously) and they were excellent.

Friday 24 May (Day 31)

It was our last full day with the car so we visited the villages that we hadn’t yet been to.  Our first port of call was Halki which a lovely small town with some nice local craft shops such as:

Next was Filoti (Naxos’ second town) which wasn’t so good.  Apeiranthos was another lovely place that we got completely lost in.

At the concert last night we met an Australian woman who said she had cycled up Mt Zeus the day before so we thought we would go and take a look.  When we got there we couldn’t quite work out how she had got up so rough and steep a path.  We knew we could never make it to the top so we aimed to get to Zeus’s cave (about half way).  The path became so bad that we turned back with the excuse that we weren’t wearing walking boots.  While we were having our lunch we noticed people on their way down wearing flip flops!

The last couple of days have been quite windy and the sea has become quite choppy  - just in time for our six hour ferry journey tomorrow to Amorgos.  Our next blog entry could be a little green in colour.
Kouros 1

 Kouros 2

Appollon

Kouros 3 (and me)


 Jazz and Blues evening

 Halki

 Mount Zeus

 The current residents of Mount Zeus

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