After my wonderful walk around Naxos town, I decided to explore the rest of the island with a guided Naxos tour. This Greek island really deserves more than a short stop over or a mere beach holiday, because apart from many historical sites, the variety of landscape, tiny villages glued to steep mountains and  terraced fields as opposed to the fertile planes of the coast is extremely interesting to see. The day long tour I took with one of several agencies which are to be found along the harbour in Naxos town is my day trip recommendation. The tour I took lasts about 8 hours, costs €25, leads right along the mountainous interior to another resort named Apollonas on the northern tip and back along the coast to Naxos town.

Our tour guide was very knowledgeable and although all these tours always include one or two stops at factories, workshops, craftshops etc. to entice the tourist to buy some local stuff, the two stops on this tour were quite enjoyable and interesting.

The first was at a small workshop were you could watch how the quite lovely Naxos ceramics were made.

The next was in the town of Halki in the island’s  interior  and introduced us to a really unique speciality of Naxos: the quite potent Kitron liquor which is distilled there. It comes in three colours, orange, light green and plain white depending on what’s added and is basically made from the fruit and leaves of the citron tree which is similar to the lemon tree but stronger in scent and flavour.

Looking at the old photographs which document the history of the distillery, not to mention a sip here and there to taste the product, makes that ‘commercial’ stop a delight.

It was also quite necessary to steady the nerves for the hair-raising road up and down and around never ending mountains, deep ravines with hardly visible bottoms, terraced but often abandoned fields and Naxos’ famous emery mines.

Apart from potatoes (exported all over Greece and further afield because of their outstanding quality) emery and some marble are Naxos’ most famous exports.

We came though the lovely town of Koronas where we witnessed, first hand, a traffic jam Naxos style and many winding streets with shops, boutiques and cafes inviting to a rest.

Then is was back to antiquity, the ‘broken’ kouros of Mesi awaited. It’s a striking example that not all the work of the talented stone masons of the 6th century BC were perfection, this massive, 17m long statue of the God Dionysus got somehow botched, it broke at the neck, was never completed and just left were it was lying at the site of the marble quarry it was hewn from.

Then we reached the costal resort of Apollonas for lunch and, if desired, a swim at the beach. Although it appears that Apollonas was discovered as a holiday resort by Greeks from Athens who decided to build some summer houses there, I was a bit disappointed. The beach is narrow and didn’t even offer sun beds or umbrellas and there was nothing much else to do or see.

Back to Naxos town on a more sedate road leading through the fertile coastal regions I did have a great Naxos tour and discovered the other side of this lovely Greek island.

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