Early off the sailboat on Saturday morning. Ann and Jim are headed to Santorini by the fast ferry from the Port in Paros.
We have some friends on this island from Pensacola who we haven’t seen in many years. We are looking forward to meeting Nickos and Katerina and their kids. We have a room reserved at Stelia Mar hotel which is located just steps away from Nikos’ house and a short walk to the village/seafront of Naoussa and steps from a beautiful sandy beach. Wishing we had more days on this island.
We are ecstatic to have the amenities of a hotel room after a week on the boat – AC, a double bed with clean sheets, a real shower and a toilet that you can flush paper down and an excellent breakfast by the pool!
Today Nick had plans for us. We walked down to their house to get a tour of the house and gardens and then load up the kids for a driving tour of the island. Nick and Katerina have created a beautiful life for themselves and their kids. They have renovated the family house that his father built originally. The house sits on a couple of acres of land that is planted with fruit and olive trees and the gardens with vegetables and herbs. There are large shade trees on the patios for enjoying meals during the summer. And they are located very close to town and near a lovely beach.
We drove into the hills to visit a couple of mountain villages – Lefka and Kostos.
Afterwards back to the house for a lovely lunch of stuffed tomatoes, greek salad and fried zuchini fritters.
We all took a quick rest before meeting up again at 5:30 to participate in an organized hike to the newly renovated/opened lighthouse on the west side of the island. We dropped Nick off to chant at a wedding in a chapel adjacent to the park where the hike began. The walk was organized by a local environmental group and they provided Greek and English explanations of the park and lighthouse’s history as well as explanation of wild flowers on the path.
Love these pictures of Anna and Mihalakis.
Bill and I enjoyed dinner at Paleo Agora – a very popular tiny cafe that serves traditional foods. It was good but as good as some other meals we had on the trip. It was fun sitting on a table for two in the street watching the parade of people walk by while we ate.
Paros is an island that I definitely want to visit again and stay longer.