Naxos to Paros

As I mentioned yesterday we really enjoyed Naxos and I finally relaxed throwing the cold (for the most part) and loving our wee apartment, so it was a bit sad to get up in the morning and leave! 

This ferry trip is less than an hour so we bought economy class tickets, smaller ferry this time too. Waiting for the very late ferry at the port involved standing in a long tunnel full of people where cigarette smoke blew through with the wind and the voices of loud Americans echo'd in the concrete structure - so another adventure. 

Left - Bye bye Naxos, walking to the boat and views from the Ferry terminal / from the Ferry as we left. 

Paros is lovely, a smaller island and a slower way of life again. We even found our walking pace slowed down here today. 

The ferry loading / unloading process was way more pleasant this time with far less people. Naxos port can only take 1 ferry at a time but Paros 2 so the chaos was post unloading with cars and people everywhere being herded by armed Port Police with whistles in their mouths, a cacophony. There are no traffic lights on these islands so the "huge" volume spike in traffic necessitated Police traffic management on the streets surrounding the port as well. We navigated our way without being hit and started the walk to our accommodation. 

It's also a working port so as we walked the first 250m or so we were also navigating past fishermen (all men) who had just come in from their morning catch and were sorting nets on the sidewalk. Honestly I think it was lovely that we are on an island where tourism isn't the only industry and seeing people go about their daily lives. Those same men were all sitting having a beer when we returned a few hours later. 

Kokoon - our accommodation - is a new building, beautifully rendered with 22 units, about the size of a small hotel room. We have a sea view room (our view is the top left photo in the bunch of pics to the right) with a tiny balcony (photo at the top of the post is Steve on our tiny balcony enjoying the sunshine and heat).
Two levels below us is their garden which is lovely but loses the sun early (bottom right pic is looking up at our room from the garden).
Further on away from the port is a sandy beach. After checking in and getting access to our room about midday we set out to explore the area we are staying in. The sea is pretty clear and clean but there are wee anemeies everywhere, I tried to photograph them in the sea but failed as the water was moving too much but here are a couple on a concrete pier. (Bottom left photo above).  

We chose a modern breakfast place for our lunch and shared a quinoa salad with salmon, cucumber and apple in it, and an avocado omelette, a vegan breakfast smoothie and I had a prosecco / Steve had a beer. I was a little disappointed to find the prosecco is the same as Khandallah pub serves, until now I have been experiencing new and interesting brands. 

After breakfast we strolled some more but I was all dressed in black and we had no hats or sunblock on so decided to go back and nap, change and head out to explore the port town of Paros Paroikia. 

These pics - top right a beach selfie when we arrived, bottom right the render on the buildings here sometimes has exposed stone, bottom left our beach, top left the church down by the port. 

Town was quiet, hardly anyone moving around, hardly any tourists. I'd say over half the shops and restaurants were closed too. The gelato man who served us said it will be like this until June. 

These photos - we walked up to a church (top left), then an old ruin (top right), at the top by the church selfie then showing a roof terrace / typical house here. 

Paros is kinda similar to Naxos architecture wise but way less picture pretty with flaky paint, rundown ruins of buildings (whereas in Naxos any empty building had a building crew working on restoring it) and general disrepear. It's also dirtier with rubbish especially masses of cigarette butts and empty cans, dog shit, just rubbish. There are a few positives though, we saw 2 x public toilet blocks here after seeing none on the other islands, we also saw lots of payphones here. There are masses and masses of car / bike / quad hire places, which is a surprise given there is a bus system on the island which we plan to take tomorrow. 

The churches are similar to Naxos and the houses are 2 storied vs 3, plus they seem to have roof terraces here. Every house is white with only dark or light blue as accents - no other colour. We walked along then up for the view then through some of the narrow streets. Unlike Naxos there aren't shops everywhere just a few and all of the restaurants are along the waterfront. We turned one corner and a family was outside their house eating in the shade of the alleyway so we navigated past their table carefully again feeling like we were invading their home. 

These photos - top looking back from the end of the strip to the port town. There are loads of different vehicles to hire here. Greek wines in the supermarket. 

At the end of the strip there is another beach where about a dozen people were sunbathing and swimming, we walked up a bit further on the one way road, looked at the views and headed back - this is when we noticed our whole walking speed had slowed down. It was mid afternoon so after checking out the bus system we went to a massive supermarket near our accommodation - this one sold everything even toothpaste - and got ourselves some paper plates and yoghurt for our breakfast and a bottle of wine for the deck. I haven't written about wine yet. I decided early on the Greek Rose's are more to my liking than the whites. Like in Italy in a restaurant you can buy by the glass $6-8 or by the 1/4, 1/2 or 1L. In the supermarket you can buy a bottle for as little as $3.50, I have been sticking to the $10 price point and done pretty well, today I splashed out and spent $11!

On our deck in the sunshine I wrote my pānui - yes I did work - for a few hours and Steve read his book. It was absolutely lovely. 

Work finished I read my book for about an hour and the sun was about to set so we headed to the nearest restaurant with seating beside the sea and had a wonderful dinner. Again ordering too much food we shared a salad of lettuce, oranges, carrot, cucumber, apple and drizzled with balsamic. Then we shared a Moussaka and a plate of fried cod with baked potato skins (so kinda fish and chips). Now that would have been enough but Steve ordered us a starter of pita breads and dips which were not only cheap but yummy and so filling. We shared 1/2L of Rose for $10. 

It was kinda perfect except two tables in one direction was a couple from Timaru talking to a guy from Northern Victoria and two tables in the other direction were Americans, plus behind them some Brits including an Irish woman who kept photographing the many many cats trying to scavenge food. Love that kiwi's travel but sometimes they are a bit loud and naïve to listen to all through your dinner. I guess it kept us entertained. 

The photos above - one of the awesome looking rooftop bars in town, another view as we walked along the waterfront. Below are two photos of sunset where we ate dinner - was divine. 

Another walk then an early night. Something I had been expecting but finally happened here was not being able to flush toilet paper. Thursday 2nd May. Andio - goodbye.