My Kind of Paradise

As soon as I walk down the first street of Naxos, I know I am not leaving tomorrow. No way, no how. I have found the Greece, and the relaxation, I was looking for. I wander around for a good thirty minutes trying to find my hotel and as soon as I locate the beautiful resort my first order of business to get in touch with my travel agent and transfer my hotel and ferry reservations from Santorini to Naxos. As soon as that is settled, I don a huge giddy grin on my face and walk around one of my new favorite places in the world.
Being low season the island is deserted, by their standards. A few people roam the streets, but mostly I have a lot of the city to myself. I wander around the small side streets, wanting to take pictures of everything I see. Naxos is not postcard beautiful, meaning it isn't combed beaches with manecured palm trees and umbrella drinks. It is still very much Greece, but it is calm, relaxed, friendly and tropical - everything I was looking for. This is my kind of paradise. My kind of wonderful. It is the permanent home of 15,000 people and is the largest island in the Cyclades group. It has a rich history dating back to before 500 BC and is featured in many Greek myths. Now, their main form of income is tourism which means everyone speaks English and all signs are made so I can actually understand them (as well as in Greek).
By now it is probably very obvious that I am not going to Crete despite my earlier conviction that no matter what I was. While it would have incredibly time consuming to make the trip, I found that even beyond that, it was going to be incredibly expensive. To take the ferry to Crete, then fly to Rhodes and then fly back to Athens was going to cost me 355 euros ($500 USD) and that wasn't including hotels or meals. In contrast, to go to Santorini and Naxos, plus stay at hotels was going to cost me a total of 175 euros. The choice was obvious. And now that I am on Naxos, I am glad I made the choice I did. I was having a really hard time coming to grips with spending a lot of money this last week of my trip. While this has been one big timeout from my life, it has not, as we would think of it, been a vacation. I would say this has been more of an experiment and exploration than anything else, but I have given myself permission, rather stubornly, to pamper myself for the time in Greece. This is why going to Athens was such a disappointment. I was hoping to have that pure "I'm on vacation" feeling you get but instead I was given just the opposite - a good dose of anxiety and depression. On Naxos though, this is all erased and I find myself strolling. Or reading. Having a mimosa at 11:30 in the morning. I have fallen in love with this place not only because it is breathtaking to me, but also because of the lulling effect its atmosphere has had.
I don't know how it's possible, but Saturday brings an even more beautiful day than Friday. There is not a cloud in the sky and the temperature would make most people wear shorts. But not the Greeks. The locals remind me of Austinites in that sense. As soon as the temperature drops below 70 degrees in Austin, people break out the winter clothing desperate to push the season out of the sweltering summer and into the cooler fall and winter. It appears to be the same here.
Since it is such a lovely day, I wander down to St. George's beach being as it is so close to the hotel and I haven't gotten a chance to see it yet. The view is simply amazing. The Aegean stretches out before you with the horizon dotted with islands and their mountain peaks. The water itself is brisk, but absolutely crystal clear. Rolling up my jeans, I wade in and looking down the beach to the only two women swimming, an idea comes to mind. Wouldn't a swim be nice?
My main problem is that I have no bathing suit. The weather forecast did not predict the tempertaures to be this high, so the closest thing I have to an acceptable swimming outfit is my Under Armour dry wick t-shirt and a pair of running shorts. But I'm a tourist who no one will ever see again, so this will do just fine. Armed with my hotel towel, I set back to the beach and with less than a week before Thanksgiving, I slip into the ocean.