The view from the southern end of Plaka beach on Naxos. This beautiful long strand of light-brown sand and dunes is the perfect place to avoid crowds, since the beach extends for approximately 4 kilometers and offers plenty of space for peace, solitude and privacy. People were few and far between on the beach yesterday (May 21), so they probably felt as though they had the entire shoreline all to themselves.
A view of Naxos Town during sunset on October 12 2013
Return trip: When a friend was asked why she travels to Greece every year, she replied: “Because you can never get enough of a really good thing.”
That’s exactly why we’re making a return trip to Naxos tomorrow — the island that we named our Destination of the Year for 2013 is calling us back to experience more of “a really good thing.”
This will be our sixth visit to Naxos so far, and we’re thrilled to be going back. We can’t wait to see some familiar faces and favourite places, and we’re looking forward to exploring parts of the island we haven’t yet seen (there are plenty, and we probably won’t even get to them all).
Want to see why we love Naxos so much? Click here to check out our Naxos photo collection on the MyGreeceTravelBlog Flickr page. The collection includes a whopping 37 albums from our October 2013 holiday, 8 from our visit in May 2013, 6 sets showing the hotels we have stayed at, and several more individual albums.
I hope you enjoy viewing the pics as much as we enjoyed taking them!
Koronos is built on the horseshoe-shaped slopes of a mountainside 30 km east of Naxos Town. The village descends hundreds of feet into the valley, and most homes are accessible only on foot.
Stair masters: I have three very specific and vivid memories of our brief visit to the Naxos mountain village of Koronos last October: a taverna tout, a man with a gun, and stairs. Lots and lots of stairs.
I’ll tell you the stories about the restaurant promoter and the guy with the gun some other time. For now I’ll stick to the stairs to keep with a common theme I’ve been posting about this week — walking around mountain villages on Naxos.
In my May 15 post I published a videoclip from our visit to Filoti, while my May 13 report included film of our walkabout in Apeiranthos. We had to climb a lot of stairs in both villages, but the workouts we got there were nothing compared to the stairclimbing challenge that awaited us in Koronos.
Popular tavernas are located far down the hillside
This village is built in a horseshoe shape on a mountainside, and descends deep into the valley. Koronos has several cafes and restaurants that are popular with tourists — including Taverna Platsa Matina & Stavros (which friends and other travellers have urged us to visit) and Taverna Dalas. The “downside” to both of these places, no pun intended, is their location on lower levels of the village. To reach them, you must walk down dozens of stairs. That’s the easy part. Getting back up to your car or the bus stop after a meal or drink will require a lot more effort as you can probably imagine.
Below are several photos showing just a few of the many sets of stairs we encountered while walking around Koronos. Those are followed by three videos. I shot the first clip while walking along a lane that wasn’t as far down the valley as the two tavernas. I filmed the next video while walking up one “street” that was basically a long, steep staircase. Dan took the third video of me walking up the steps while I was filming my climb.
We’re physically active and do a lot of walking and stair climbing whenever we’re in Greece, but I felt more winded than I expected by the end of that uphill hike. I would not want to walk all those stairs after a big meal and a few glasses of wine!
View of Koronos from the side of the highway where the Naxos bus dropped us off. This sloped road leads only part way into the village, perhaps 30 to 50 meters. Then the fun stair climbing begins!
A tourist strolls down the road leading into Koronos. One series after another of thigh-burning stair climbs awaits him.
This was the first set of steps we walked down. We climbed back up a short time later after we finished exploring the left-hand side of the village.
A streak of sunlight illuminates a set of steps
Yet another flight of steps in Koronos
Several flights of steps were under renovation on the day we visited Koronos. Workers had closed off two lanes while they laid stones in place. Work on this particular staircase wasn’t complete, but it had been reopened to traffic.
Looking down a long, curving set of steps. This was the last staircase we climbed on our way to the Koronos bus stop to catch our ride back to Naxos Town.
These buildings were surrounded by stairs on two sides
I filmed this clip while walking along one of the streets in Koronos
I shot this clip while climbing a long flight of stairs. I counted 102 steps during the minute and 20 seconds it took me to walk up.
Dan filmed me going up the stairs while I was filming my climb. You don’t need to go to a gym to get exercise on Naxos … just visit a mountain village like Koronos and you’re guaranteed a rigorous cardio workout!
A view of Filoti village, captured from a video I shot while we were riding a bus on Naxos last October. Click the image to see a larger-size photo.
Filoti on foot: There are more than 30 different mountain villages on Naxos, but Filoti makes a bigger and more memorable impression than most when you approach by bus, by car or on foot.
That’s not just because Filoti is the largest village on the island, but because of its dramatic amphitheatrical layout across the lower slopes of Mount Zas, the tallest mountain in the Cyclades.
The village looks quite impressive when it first comes into view as you approach on the road from Chalki. The first time I caught a glimpse of Filoti eight years ago, I was so fascinated by the sight that I had to stop the car so I could get out and take a better look. Seeing it for the second time last October, while walking there from Chalki, was equally as breathtaking.
Mountain road offers spectacular views of the village
But the village is even more spectacular to see from numerous vantage points on the road that climbs the mountainside high above Filoti en route to Apeiranthos and other hamlets to the northeast. If you’re driving a vehicle, there are a few lookout points where you can pull over and get good views of Filoti. But if you’re riding on a bus, you’ll get to see the village much better and for longer periods of time. We saw Filoti on four bus rides to and from Apeiranthos and Koronos last fall, and I was blown away by the views each time.
Although Filoti is a predominantly residential area, the road that runs through it is lined with taverna and cafés, a few shops and fruit markets, banks, a post office and various local businesses and municipal service offices. Top tourist attractions include the Panagia Filotitissa (Our Lady Filotitissa Church) and the Venetian-era Barotsi Tower, as well as a café-lined main square shaded by a giant plane tree.
Panagia Filotitissa, the Our Lady of Filotitissa Church in Filoti
A memorable visit to Panagia Filotitissa
Our favourite moment in Filoti occurred while we were taking photos outside Panagia Filotitissa. As I was snapping a picture of the church’s beautiful belltower, an elderly woman, dressed head-to-toe in black, quietly emerged from one of the church’s front doors and beckoned us to approach. She could speak only a few words of English, and I could understand even less of her Greek, but her gestures made it clear we were being welcomed to the church and urged to take a look inside. The interior is marvellous … if you ever get to Filoti, be sure to have a look inside the Panagia if the church is open.
There are a few photos of the church interior, along with more than 200 pictures of the town, in my Filoti Village album on the MyGreeceTravelBlog Flickr page.
Below is a video I filmed while we were walking through the village. The first minute of the clip shows the narrow lane that leads to Panagia Filotitissa, while the second half of the video shows part of a residential area we explored near the opposite end of the village. Although restaurants and shops are located along the flat (but slightly sloped) main road, the rest of the village is built on hillsides. That means you’ll have to do a lot of stair climbing if you want to wander around Filoti!
The first minute of this clip shows the walk to Panagia Filotitissa. The rest of the video shows some residential “streets” on the opposite side of the village.
Apeiranthos is sometimes referred to as “the marble village” because many of its buildings, lanes and public squares have been constructed from marble and stone. Click on the photo to see a full-size image.
Marble marvel: One of our memorable excursions on Naxos last October was a visit to Apeiranthos, described in many travel guides and websites as one of the island’s prettiest mountain villages.
Literally made of stone, Apeiranthos is often called “the marble village” since many of its squares, streets and buildings have been constructed with slabs and sheets of the crystalline rock.
The village is home to four separate museums (Archaeological, Folk Art, Geological and Natural History), the Zevgoli Tower (which dates to the 17th Century), several tavernas and cafés, and some local artcraft and gift shops.
Village is situated 28 km from Naxos Town
We got to Apeiranthos by taking one of the local buses which, at that time of season, operated only a few return trips per day on the 28 km route between Chora (Naxos Town) and the village. Return fare cost €12.40 — a price of €3.10 per person each way. The highlight of the ride was the tremendous scenery we got to enjoy, particularly the mountain and valley views on the twisting section of highway above Filoti village (check out the post below for a videoclip showing some of the fabulous views from the bus). Despite the limited departure and return bus trips, we still had several hours at Apeiranthos — plenty of time to explore the village and vicinity, as well as stop for a drink and snack at Samaradiko Café.
The village was fairly quiet during the several hours we spent visiting the museums and walking around. We saw several small tour groups and perhaps three dozen other tourists (at most) wandering through the village or having coffee or lunch in one of the cafés. Besides the people working in restaurants and shops, we saw just a handful of local residents plus a few cats and dogs. We had most of the village entirely to ourselves which was wonderful, since we don’t like crowded places.
A video walk along the marble-paved streets
Below is a two and a half-minute videoclip that I shot while we were walking through passageways and up some of the marble- and stone-paved steps. I think it will give you a reasonably good impression of what it’s like to actually wander the village’s residential hillside streets.
To see more of this charming mountain village, click here to view over 300 photos in the Apeiranthos album on the MyGreeceTravelBlog Flickr page.
If you would like to learn more about Apeiranthos, click here to read a richly detailed article that was written by Konstantinos Toubakaris and published on the travel website This is Naxos. Take note that if you plan to do further research, you will probably encounter several variations in the spelling of the village name. Besides Apeiranthos, I have seen guides, maps and websites use Apiranthos, Aperanthos, Aperathos and Aperathou. They’re all one and the same place.
Here’s a 2.5-minute videoclip I shot while walking around “the marble village” of Apeiranthos on October 9 2013.
I shot this 5-minute-long video while we were taking the bus from Naxos Town to the mountain village of Apeiranthos last October 9.
Valley views: We rented a car during our second visit to Naxos back in 2006 so we could spend a day driving around the island and visiting a few of the nearly three dozen different mountain villages. Since I was behind the wheel on the ride up to the villages and had to concentrate on the road rather than the scenery, I didn’t get much of a chance to enjoy the impressive views.
I finally got that opportunity last October when we took the local bus to several villages, including Chalki, Filoti, Apeiranthos and Koronos, on three different days. Each time I got to watch the scenery pass by while somebody else handled the driving.
The stretch of road from Filoti to Apeiranthos was my favourite since it offers breathtaking panoramic views of the beautiful valley and mountain scenery, as well as Filoti village hundreds of feet below. And since we were sitting high up in a bus, we had a vastly better vantage point than we ever would have gotten had we been riding in a compact rental car again.
Above is a 5-minute video I filmed while the bus was climbing the mountainside above Filoti. Please pardon the shaky filming — it was difficult holding the camera steady while the bus maneuvered along the many bends in the road. You’ll get to see Filoti village numerous times between the 1:40 mark and the end of the clip.
Enjoy the ride!
Approaching Filoti, one of more than two dozen fascinating mountain villages on Naxos. This image is one of just 600 photos from the Two Weeks on Naxos album on the MyGreeceTravelBlog Flickr page. Click here to open the album and view the photo highlights from our Naxos vacation last October.
