Greek Island Odyssey Part II: Naxos

At the port in Naxos we were met by George, a friend of a friend who owned a guest house that we'd arranged to stay at. George - who has the world's greatest and most permanent smile - was holding a large sign saying "Vasco Astro" on it. George's guest house, P&G Resorts, is located 10 meters away from the town beach, Ayios Yeoryios, at the southern end of the town, away from the mayhem of the port and the Paralia.

Naxos is the largest of the Cyclades islands and is easily able to sustain itself without the tourist euros which made it very appealing. However, tourism is still big business and the place was packed with holidaying Greeks, Italians and, bizarrely, Fins. Almost immediately, though, you could tell the place was much less frenetic than Santorini and there was a nice air of calm hanging over the place.

Once I'd brought the body temperature back to normal levels by hanging about under the air-conditioning unit for twenty minutes, ignoring Vee's chattering teeth and the fact that he was perched on the bed in his winter coat, I was ready to hit the streets. We ate dinner at a packed restaurant called Maros, which I highly recommend.

Just as we were tucking into our massive yoghurty dessert, a middle-aged couple walked in and made their way to the empty table next to us.



Both had carrot orange skin and both were dressed from head to toe in white, her in a floor length floaty skirt and him in white linen pants and white shirt and white leather shoes. Mr Carrot had a silver chain around his neck. It was so big and heavy, it clanked when he walked. Mrs Carrot had purple spiky hair, too much gold jewelery and had overdosed on the perfume.

"I bet you 14 bowls of Greek yoghurt that they are Dutch!" I whispered through clenched teeth. Only Dutch men think that they can get away with looking like they just walked off the set of a squeaky clean boy band photo-shoot when they are pushing sixty. Only the Dutch think that being orange all year round and having skin like a cheap leather handbag is healthy and that having a loyalty card to the local tanning salon is normal.

Mr and Mrs Carrot sat down and proceeded to talk about us and the other diners in Dutch, which is something that the Dutch do because they think that no one can understand them. Then they offered to take a photo of me and Vee and proceeded to laugh about the photo they'd taken. When we left, I said goodbye to them and bid them a nice evening in Dutch. Mr Carrot responded in Dutch and only realised that he was not speaking English anymore when he got to the end of his sentence. Mrs Carrot just stared, open mouthed.

Me one. Nederlanders nil.

By about 23:00, the burn on my leg was beginning to throb. The area around it was swelling up and oozing yellow stuff so I decided to go to the hospital and get it checked out. Once I'd got past the security guard, I walked straight into the Accident and Emergency room where the doctor took one look at my leg, winced, muttered the words "Motorbike" and then ordered me to lie down. In the next bed, an old lady was having a bloodied, broken nose attended to. I hope the mean-looking old man sitting at the bedside was not responsible. The doctor lathered my leg in something cold, creamy and soothing and then bandaged me up. I'd drunk half a litre of wine and was chuckling away with Vee that I was going to have a stupid tan line and hadn't moved from the bed.

"What is so funny?" demanded the doctor.

"Er nothing." He was sitting at a huge old desk with a giant ledger open. I'd like to say he was holding a feather quill because it would describe the scene perfectly but it was just a pen.

"Is there a problem?" he asked. I shook my head.

Then he asked me my name, nationality and my father's first name, which I thought was very, very strange and I had to resist the temptation to get into an existential conversation about the percentage of people who he'd asked that didn't actually know their father's name. Then, as I was searching about in my bag for my credit card to pay what I thought was going to be an extortionate bill that I was going to be unable to reclaim from my health insurer, he said goodbye and waved me out of the room. All this had taken less than five minutes. I showed no ID, no medical insurance card, nothing. When I went to the pharmacy to get the antibacterial cream he'd prescribed me, I specifically asked for a receipt and the prescription paper back for claiming purposes until I realised that the cream had cost me EUR 1.13. Wasn't worth the bother.

Greece one. Nederland nil.

After that day, I decided I needed to have a purely medicinal cocktail. We found a great bar on the beach within stumbling distance from George's, where we lounged in deck chairs, two meters from the sea, listening to the waves gently roll.



I chose to try the Naxos Kitron, which is a lemony flavoured local spirit. The waiter seemed highly amused by my choice and I was worried I'd ordered something very, very potent. My Kitron was served in a tall cosmopolitan glass and, upon first sip, tasted like the moist towelette they give you on planes. The second sip tastes more like mild toilet cleaner. By the third sip, you're drinking a rather nice lemony brew.

Next: Motorcycle madness and the rest of Naxos.