A Few Days Visiting Naxos: The Portara, a Four-Hour Nap, and Nighttime Walks Along the Marina

Part 3 of 8 in my travel series from the summer of 2022.

Visiting Naxos

Naxos was exactly what I needed. I love visiting Naxos! I stayed at an Airbnb called 3 Wishes that just could not have been better. It’s basically a small three-room place that opened in 2018. I’m surmising that it was a remodeled floor in an already existing building. My room could not have been more serene.

After my short ferry ride from Paros, I walked the half-kilometer to the Airbnb, and next thing I knew I was waking up from a four-hour nap. The room was so peaceful and the bed so comfortable that I took the longest nap of my adult life. That’s a great way to leave behind the preceding three weeks and open the door on the next part of this trip.

Dinner and the Portara

That evening I wandered around the old town, as one does, and settled on a restaurant up the hillside with a great view. I ordered a traditional baked meatball dish that is cooked in a pot with vegetables and cheese. I had the same dish on my last visit to Naxos five years ago. The meatballs end up quite soft. The whole thing is an incredible comfort food. I might try to recreate it at home sometime. It can’t be that hard.

More wandering afterward brought me to the icon of the island: the famous Portara Gate. This is a doorway to a temple to Apollo from around 580 BCE that I believe was never completed. It dominates a small islet right off the coast of the town. It’s a very impressive structure.

To get there you have to walk a short causeway. As I walked there in the dark trying to avoid being splashed by the occasional crashing wave, I couldn’t help but imagine what this causeway would have looked like in the US. It would have had guardrails the entire way (here there were NONE). It would probably have a wall to prevent splashing. It would have been lit to some ridiculously bright standard, and it would have been evenly paved and included ramps. So all the character would have been eliminated for the sake of safety. Here you’re trusted that your own sense of self-preservation will see you through. And if you’re in a wheelchair, once you reach the stairs at the end of the causeway, you’re left either out of luck or hoping your friends are strong enough to pick you up.

Nighttime Along the Marina

After my loop around the Portara, I walked along the main strip in town. Naxos is well designed for this. It has a marina and a pretty underused vehicle road that runs along that, and then it has a parallel walking road. In the wide gap between, there are plenty of restaurants. The whole place is bustling at night.

As I’ve experienced in many towns and cities throughout the world, people aren’t sitting at home at night playing video games or watching TV. They’re walking around with their friends, eating, drinking, and enjoying the night, which is so much more pleasant than the heat of the day. This contributes to a sense of community—something woefully vanishing from American life.

It’s a weird juxtaposition to be here in this space that seems so friendly and fun and hear news of yet another mass shooting in the terribly dysfunctional US. The US has lost its way and it’s so tragic to see.