Day 8: Nudists in Naxos

Will and I came up with many titles for this blog post, one of his suggestions was, “They’re Naked and We’re Afraid” and a couple others that are a little too inappropriate, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

We went to breakfast this morning down by the waterfront and set up a game plan for the day.

When we left Athens, our host sent us a list of recommended activities for Naxos. One of which was walking the long stretch of beaches between Agios Ana and Plaka beach. We wanted to get in some walking, so we mapped out directions to Plaka Beach from our Airbnb. It seemed like it would be an easy 4 miles to get there. It wasn’t…

We ended up walking through a mixture of highway and a variety of small towns before reaching the beach front. It took us about an hour and a half. When we got there we felt it was worth the walk, though! The beaches were the lightest blue we had seen so far and it was the perfect temperature to walk down the beach.

We finally came to the highly recommended Plaka beach and the first thing we saw was bare skin everywhere. I don’t know if that specific section of the beach is reserved for nudists, but I felt out of place just wearing one!

When we reached the end of the beach, we took a bus back to town and walked up to the Temple of Apollo. It is a huge arch overlooking the sea and a pile of fallen column blocks. Will and I were surprised that the arch was still standing, just because the wind was so strong!

We continued to explore Old Town, before going back to our room to read for a bit. Later, we watched the sunset again on the docks and got a gyro and greek salad in town. For some reason, they always put french fries in the gyros, but we’re a fan!

Our host recommended some fun activities to do in Naxos, including seeing a movie at the open air cinema. We decided to go to a late screening of the new Mission Impossible movie and it was so much fun! The theater opened up to the sky and as it got darker we could see every star.

As we made our way back to the room at 11:15 pm, we laughed because the nightlife in Naxos was just beginning and we were ready to hit the hay.

Cheers!
Emma