Our European Adventure

Awoke to the sound of a very unwelcome alarm at 5am. For some unknown reason, our lights wouldn’t turn on, and the delightful fellow at reception generously helped us out. When I phoned back to let him know they were on, he replied, “I know!” and promptly hung up. What a gem. He also tried to make us pay the hotel bill a second time, despite everything we’d been through with the other hotel booking et cetera. We kindly thanked him for his special efforts to make our visit to Athens memorable and comfortable, then jumped in the cab.

The boat trip to Naxos was fairly uneventful, mainly because we slept through most of it! The five hours went by pretty fast and soon we were stepping onto a beautiful Greek island! Hurrah! The old guy who met us at the port huffed and puffed to get our suitcases into the back of his tiny car, then drove us up the hill to the lovely Hotel Grotta. Oh baby! We were greeted by a stunning view from the top of the cliffs out toward the Mediterranean, and by our delightful hostess, who immediately offered us some of her own home made treats and a shot of Naxos’ own “KITPON” (or, Citron, if you’re not Greek) which is lovely and lemony. Woohooo!!

We set straight off for the beach, driven by our hostess’s cousin, Yianni. The weather was nice and we wandered along the shoreline admiring the sunset and feeling pretty good about ourselves for choosing to come to Naxos. Also pretended to be hot models posing on some of the rocks, which was hilarious considering our bad hair, bad attire, and bad flabby whiteness. Oh! Forgot to mention this was our first chance to wear our sandals from the poet sandal maker! I had to quickly scratch off the remaining bits of my chipped nail polish before we left because my feet looked so festy! It’s been a while since they’ve been out in public. Ew!

After our meanderings along the beach we headed back for dinner and ended up at a Mexican restaurant. Enjoyed dinner and the shortcut walk back to the hotel up the rocky mountain path. Nice.