I've never been impressed with the beef I've had in Greece either, but lamb, pork, chicken, and rabbit are more their style. Seafood, of course, is excellent, but pricy at times. Menu prices often show fresh fish by the kilo, so when you choose a fish ask how much it will cost. Mackerel and sardines are reasonably priced, and being oily fish are good for your heart. You could also try octopus or calamari. Swordfish is usually frozen, but good nevertheless.

Oh, and I'm glad you liked Picasso. It's a bit risky recommending a Mexican restaurant in Greece to someone from Texas, but it sure beats Taco Bell, which is all we have near where I live. ;-)

Several years ago a retired jockey opened a Mexican restaurant in nearby Newmarket (the horse racing capital of England) and it was pretty good, but he ran into problems with the local planning authorities for flying a Mexican flag on the storefront. He took down the flag and replaced it with a huge set of longhorns, but that didn't go down very well either.

What did i hear? a good mexican restaurant in Naxos?
The prize for the worse mexican restaurant outside of Mexico goes to Athens..... every restaurant that has mexican as part of it's name here., is simply unacceptable...

Hello, Vrmonk-
My husband and I loved Naxos! I'm sorry that Kalergis didn't work out as we were very happy there, but there realy are so many good options.

Our drive through the mountains was amazing, and the smaller towns high up in the hills really feel away from tourist destinations as you can imagine. Signage, at times, was a bit of a mystery, and we'd sometimes find ourselves baffled at where we ended up. But it's all part of the journey!

I wanted to make one recommendation for dinner that was given to us by Irini at Naxos Vision( if she is still working there, please say hello from Paule & Michael- she was a real pleasure to meet and talk with); here is what I wrote in my notes:

"Maro-- by the square, same street as pharmacy. Excellent! We eat sagonaki cheese(naxos hard cheese), fried zucchini balls, mushrooms in garlic& cognac, grilled lamb chop. The best place in Naxos by far! Really superior. Others okay, but this was the best. Inexpensive, large portions. Terrific."

It was one of our favorite places - no pretensions, and very popular with locals. Just really good, home-style cooking.

Paule

Paule..
had to laugh reading that you ate sagonaki.... which in greek means "small jaw"..( σαγονάκι)
you actually ate saganaki... ( σαγανάκι)

Funny, clausar!

There's a pun in here somewhere but I can't seem to get there (mouth to mouth? jawing off?). But I'll leave it to others to find it, if they so desire!

Thanks for the correction - the SAGANAKI was delicious!

Paule

Saganaki comes from sagani, which actually was a traditional
two handled pan, used for fried cheese.... that is now known as saganaki..

Paule, thanks for the Maro's suggestion. We'll give it a try! And Irini was very helpful yesterday. I'll tell her hi for you!

And yes heimdall and stanbr, good advice to stay away from beef. I'd had amazing veal at two places in Santorini (not white like our veal, it looked like beef but was super tender). It was good for the baby and I was hoping Sergiani's would be similar...especially since the owner recommended it for her.

We had a fantastic dinner last night at Scirocco's right in the main square, though. I found it on TA. My roasted chicken with oven potatoes, my husband's octopus salad, and the stuffed tomatoes were so tasty. The baby loved it all - even the octopus b/c it was so tender! Best of all is the great service (accommodating waitstaff that seemed to truly enjoy working there) and the prices (28 euros including a large sparkling water, bread, and 1/2 carafe of wine). And, we ran into Katerina and Apostolis dining there. They agreed it's one of the best restaurants in Naxos.

Btw, the travel agency two doors down seems shady to me. He charged me an extra euro for our tickets and didn't take down our names and genders for the Blue Star ferry tickets...different from my other experiences. Hmm...

Well we are trying to get the baby to nap before we head to the mountains. It's so nice to have all the input from everyone!

It's common to pay a small surcharge to the agent when buying ferry tickets. Amphitrion Holidays at Athens Airport charges €2/ticket. Gender is immaterial unless you are booking a shared cabin, but passengers' names should be on the tickets.

Clausar, I wonder how many little slips I have made when trying out my few words of Greek. That reminds me of the famous JFK speech when he said "Ich bin ein Berliner". I'm not a German speaker either, but apparently he should have said "Ich bin Berliner". Adding the "ein" meant that he was calling himself a jam doughnut!

Heimdall
This reminds of a german friend of mine who worked as a rep of a big german tour operator, on the island of Skiathos..
During a whole summer she told to the taxi drivers to bring the Vagelitses of the clients....
It was after 7 months that she discovered that Vagelitsa is a woman's name... while valitsa is the suitcase.......
Everybody thought it was cute... and no one ever corrected her...

So we made it to Halki which was so peaceful and pleasant that we stayed a bit for some coffee and cake and then browsed the shops. We then decided to skip the rest and go to the beach one last time as we're out on the 9:30am ferry tomorrow. We went by Agios Anna and no one was swimming. The water looked very calm but people were only sunbathing and there were tons of boats. We looked on the other side of the spit at what I believe was Agios Prokopios and lots of people were in the water...so we headed over there. Agios Prokopios might be more beautiful than Agios Georgios, but the sand is much rougher (like the coarse sand in the sandpits at a children's playgrounds) and, as Heimdall said, the water was colder and the waves were bigger. We dipped in for exactly 2 minutes before deciding to turn our car in early and catch the last of the warmth at Agios Georgios. There might be seaweed and that unfortunate abandoned-looking cafe in plain view, but the water is so clear and calm and the sand is soft. I'm so glad we stayed here instead!

Thanks again all for the advice and I'll have a trip report put to help future travelers!