A Travel Blog
We took a one-day cruise from Naxos specifically to visit the island of Delos, but the itinerary also took us to the nearby island of Mykonos for a few hours. We never planned to visit Mykonos, but this short stop was a chance to glimpse another side of Greece.
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There are too many interesting sights around Naxos Town to fit into one post, so here are some more views and details we’ve stumbled across since this previous post.
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Naxos Town (also known as simply Chora) is the main city on the island of Naxos, as well as the ferry port. Naxos is a hub for the Cycladic island ferries, and the enormous ships are arriving and departing many times each day, with streams of people, vehicles and cargo embarking and disembarking every hour or two.
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After our stay on tiny Astypalea, we took an early-morning ferry to the island of Naxos, the largest island in the Cyclades group. We are staying in Naxos Town (Chora) where there’s a lively port area with many restaurants and bars, as well as a fascinating labyrinth of streets that lead up to a Venetian castle.
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We’ve returned to the streets around the castle a few times now, wandering at different times of day and in different lighting, and the urge to take a photos is impossible to resist.
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Pera Gialos is a small port adjoining the main town (Chora) in Astypalea. It used to be the primary port for the island, but now the larger ferries dock at a separate port several miles out of town. Pera Gialos is a former fishing community, and it retains a quieter feeling, with small shops and restaurants surrounding a concrete pier and a sandy beach.
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After winding our way up through the heart of Astypalea’s Chora, we finally found ourselves in the stony castle (aka kastro or castro) that dominates the top of the hill. Entrance was through an arched tunnel, where we also found some signboards with information about the history of the castle.
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Despite being in Astypalea for a while, we couldn’t resist climbing up through the steep, winding streets of the Chora to see the castle at the top on our very first day.
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While in Astypalea we have rented one of 11 small houses in a complex located just between the Chora and Livadi beach. Each house has separate access, but they are connected to some common areas, including a beautiful little patio where the staff serve great breakfasts each morning. It’s an interesting mix of having the privacy of your own place with some of the conveniences of staying in a hotel. Very low stress!
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From Athens, we took a short flight to the small island of Astypalea (also sometimes spelled Astypalaia, a bit closer to the Greek Αστυπάλαια). Shaped like a butterfly from above, the island’s main town (or Chora, from Χώρα for “town”) is located in the gap between the two wings of the butterfly. The town features whitewashed Cyclades-style buildings ringing a steep castle-topped hill, spilling down to a small sea port.
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Knossos is an archeological site located in Crete just outside the capital city of Heraklion. The palace complexes built here by the ancient Minoans peaked around 1700 BC with a population of over 100,000 residents.
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Rethymno may be smaller than Chania, but its Venetian Fortezza (fortress, aka castle) is much more impressive than the Firka in Chania. We’d been warned the Fortezza might be closed due to recent rainy weather, but we wandered up anyway, if only to take some photos of the outside.
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