Drew On Tour 2013: Naxos day 1,2&3 ( mixed )

Temples Apollo and Demeter
Hidden Kouroi
Decorated easter candles
stale honey Nougat
Animals in unexpected places
The beautiful Sunset
Meals - our special breakfast place and Souvlaki like uncle Crispy told us about.

TEMPLES

Apollo :(dictated) We walked to the end of the beach of Choro which is the Capitol of Naxos and where we stayed. At the tip is the Temple of Apollo. We avoided the waves which were calm on one side of the path and rough on the other as the spray of the sea combined forces with the wind to saturate the path. The rough side was purple, black and dark blue compared with the gentle side which was light blue, aqua, green and "lime-ish". I was surprised that protection from the wind made such a difference to the colours.

The path to Apollos Temple. One side the ocean is rough and the other side was smooth

The temple looked a bit like a giant frame of a photo but without the bottom. After the distant mountain, the photo frame was the first thing we saw as our ferry came close to Naxos.

Apollo's Temple

Demeter's Temple

Here is Zoe telling us about the story of Demeter. Her daughters name was Persephone. Persephone was Hades' wife but she didn't want to be. She was tricked by Hades into eating 3 pomegranate seeds (seeds of the dead) which means that she had to stay in the underworld for 3 months of every year. Because she is The Goddess of Flowers when she was in the underworld, no flowers grew and this is how the Greeks explained winter.

We got a bit lost driving to find the Temple.

Huh?

This is what the Temple looked like. It was in the fields because Demeter is the Goddess of agriculture and fertility. As we walked up the path to see the Temple we saw some goats and some cows. The cows had small horns and one front foot was tied to one backfoot to stop them running away I think.

The Temple looked a bit like a church.

Demeter's Temple far away I a field

Panorama with me and the Temple

ANIMALS IN UNEXPECTED PLACES

Animals that took me by surprise today:

a flock of sheep running across the road followed by a sheep dog and a shepherd with a mobile phone.
A depressing chameleon in a pet shop - I think it was cruel to keep that animal in a teeny cage with wood shavings
A big and round pig in the back of a ute. Pig not happy
Goats near Demeter's temple
Horses and donkeys being led on the road
A dead rat in a creek
A gazillion tadpoles

HIDDEN KOURI

The kouri are gigantic figures of stone - about 5 metres long. 5 metres tall if they were standing up. We drove for an hour to a town called Ano Potamia and walked five minutes to some small woods. We had to walk up long paths to find both of them. They were hidden so we had to choose the right turn offs and steps to find them. Because they were separate it took even longer.

When we found the first kouri I couldn't even see it. Zoe had to point out that the large stone shape in front of me was a body, a face, two arms and two legs. They were made over 2000 years ago from pure white marble. They are still here now because when the encounters Greeks were carrying them their kouri's marble legs snapped so they couldn't stand them up. Did you know there are only about 200 kouri's left in the world?