Paros, Greece (12-22 September 2013)

12 September: After departing our wonderful abode in Asturias, our destination was back to Colmenar de Oreja to Chelo and Chema's pad to drop off some more gear prior to our midnight-ish departure flight to Athens. We took a different path along the northern coast of Spain (beautiful) and then cut inland directly to Madrid through a Cantabrian Mountain pass, a secondary road through classic inland northern Spain, bypassed the city of Burgos as well as Madrid and arrived to our luggage drop-off location around 5 pm. A few beers with Chema and Chelo to wile away the time talking of the beauty of Asturias (until Chelo cut me off from further cervezas [and rightly so]), which is a favorite area of Chema (more so than southern Spain). The kids and Robin said their final 'Hasta Luegos' (I would see them again on a planned rendezvous on the very early morning of 1 October to pick up the luggage we were leaving at their pad). We then made our way to Barajas International Airport, arrived around 10 pm and definitely had some time to kill so the kids basically made a lot of noise practicing Greek marathons on the walking escalator things next to the gate as illustrated in this pic for a good hour or so, much to the delight of other waiting passengers.

13 September: We then got on the midnight horror flight, and after a bit of sleep we rolled into Athens International Airport with some pretty tired kids. Here they are getting a bit of grub prior to our connecting flight to the island of Mykonos in Greece.



We got to Mykonos in the early morning and had a couple of hours to kill along the port prior to our short ferry ride to the island of Paros. Here are Frankie and Luca having an exploration of the port environs.

 

We rolled into the port of Paros, were gratefully picked up by our accommodation hosts, and then whisked off to our apartment in a very nice location just on the outskirts of Paros Parikia (the major town on the island). We dropped off our gear and went down to the local beach (Delfini Beach) near our accommodation to the Taverna (beachside restaurant/bar) called Magaya. Magaya is the beachside taverna of choice of the locals we know on the island, and where we had arranged to meet the Perth-ian Mel Byers, who lives in Paros and is married to a Greek fella (Nico). As the next pic illustrates this a great spot where we spent a fair amount of time over the next week or so... What more could you ask for... That's Mel and Robsie catching up, a hammock, beach and then clear blue crystal Agean waters... Our timing was impeccable as the tourist season was over, but all of the summer fun activities (and weather) were still functioning with a planned seasonal shut-down around 1 October (well after our departure date)...

14 September: The day before at Magaya (Taverna at Delfini Beach next to our accommodation) we also met another Perthian, Lisa, who is a good friend of Mel's (who is also married to a Greek fella named Costas). Further, another Perth-ian family (Mal, Anne, Alice, Annabelle and Jack) were also holidaying in Paros. Today we all rendezvoused at Kalogeros Beach (the mud beach), where there is a geologic formation whereby one breaks off a bit of the clay and mixes it with seawater serves as an excellent mud treatment. Here's a pic of most of the folks in their mud-wares...

We then went to hang out at the lovely seaside village of Piso Livadi to have a couple of drinks and some chow. Great spot with a playground, beach and drink venue all co-located, Gold as illustrated in the next several pics.



A typical manner of display of one of the seafood delicacies in the region, mmm Octopus.



Melanie and Nico's little girl, Alexia, and Luca are very similar in age and rapidly became good friends, nice for Luca to have a buddy her same age.



15 September: After a good night's sleep the kids were full of juice. The grounds at our accommodation had plenty of room for morning frolicking and several hammocks that were utilised aplenty.

It was then back down to Delfini Beach (and Magaya's) for more chilling out in those clear blue Agean waters. Here's Luca about to get stuck into the day's beach activities.

Mal and Anne hired a swanky pad on the other side of the bay and invited the whole crew mentioned previously to a great dinner. Here's the chef preparing the cooked fish with a whole slew of other delicious Greek specialties. Excellent meal!

Their pad also had a swimming pool, here's the herd of kids having their popsicles after dinner a la feet in the pool.

And Mel enjoying the great view from the front of the pad across the bay with Paros Parakia in the background. Our accommodation location was approximately at the extreme middle left of the picture. Eventually everyone filtered back to their homes throughout the evening, but the Griswold's remained til late in the evening, a good night with tuckered out kids at the end of it around 1 am.

16 September: Yep, after a late sleep-in in it was back to Delfini and Magaya Taverna the next day around noon-ish. Mal, Anne and their kids arrived. It was great having them around as their two older girls were similar aged to ours two oldest, and they all became quite independent as illustrated in this zoom of them doing the rock-tide pool exploring thing.

This led ample time for adult pursuits of socialising sans kids as illustrated in this picture of Mal and myself!

Anne and Mal with kids in tow had to ska-dootle to manage ole young Jack's sleep schedule, so Luca and Frankie had a bit of time chilling out in the hammock-on-the-beach next to the Taverna.

17 September: Well today the plan was to try to check out some other parts of Paros other than Delfini Beach (which we could have happily done day after day). One of the great tragedies during our entire time in Spain was quite simply the lack of monkey bars at any of the playgrounds, one of Frankie's favorite past times. Mel informed us that there was a playground with such an apparatus in the main plaza of Paros Parikia. Here is Frankie finally getting back into her thing after a 2 month hiatus with some support from Luca and Alexia.

And a view of a typical town street from the restaurant Manamana. Manamana's proprietors  are Nico (Mel's husband) and Costa (Lisa's husband). The folks in the picture are the Griswold kids along with Mel and Alexis in the far background, returning from a very nice Gelato shop just down the road. During the high tourist season, presumably this street would have been packed.

The girls chowing down on their helados on the front door step to bar/kitchen of Manamana.  

And a shot of Griswold's ambling down the narrow path of the white-washed town.  

We then made our way over to Kolimpithres Beach on the northwestern sector of the island. Great rocks everywhere for older kids to do some beach bouldering, plenty of sand for younger ones to carry out bucket-n-spade activities, and for Sam and me to get in some beach paddle ball.  

Here's a shot of some of the boulders around with Mel in the foreground and Anne in the background.

Mal, Anne and me enjoying a few beach drinks, and young Jack enjoying the beach starkers!

Luca and Alexia making shadows on a boulder ledge...

We then went into Naoussa with Mal-Anne-Annabelle-Alice-Jack for a nice dinner on the waterfront. Naoussa is the major town in the north of the island with a beautiful waterfront. Had a nice dinner, kids went completely nuts running around the 'road with no traffic allowed', and with Anne around, Robsie and I actually managed to get a picture of us together.

18 September: So if you are hardcore Oz Griswold blog follower (all two of you), you may recall the strong theme of cats during our stay in the Alpujarras region of southern Spain during mid-July to mid-August. Well this feisty feline was the equal of all the cats in the Spanish pueblo of Pampaneira (all 500 of them!). We spent a great amount of time keeping him out of our accommodation, keeping him away from our food, and of course cuddling him. It was a good cat fix for the kids. 

We then checked out the 'Church of the 100 Doors', the biggest church on the island located in Paros Parikia, a beautiful Byzantine church. I thought there were a lot of churches in Spain, but in terms of numbers Paros was more impressive in this statistic. They are everywhere, albeit most are extremely small... Just in the town of Paros Parikia I reckon we saw more than fifteen in the few streets that we meandered about... 

A small monastic enclave (bedroom) next to the main church hall. Kids asked me if someone really sleep on that slab of rock? Definitely used to, there was a blanket-doona that looked clean so maybe they still do... 

OK, the town was nice, but it got hot so it was back to Delfini beach for some shade, cervezas and clear blue Aegean waters once again. 

Relaxation and catching up for Mel and Robsie ensued... 

And entertaining the kids till they got the good sense to go exploring and leave us in peace. 

That's more like it. 

19 September: The next day we decided to go and check out the nearby beach to the immediate west of our accommodation called Parasporos, a break from our usual Delfini Beach excursion to the immediate east. Here are the troops walking along the path to the beach. 

We spent about 2 hours at the beach of which about 1 hour and 59 minutes of my time was taken up by... Yep you got it, playing beach paddle ball with Sam. This was an eventful session as we managed to break our record of 38 consecutive hits at the beach of San Jose in Cabo de Gato National Park in southern Spain with a new record of 45 consecutive hits, well done Sam! 

A view of our shady-thing at Parasporos Beach from the water. 

And typical adult type beverages on the beach (the one on the right is a Freddo cappuccino not a guiness!!)...  

 

We then made our way over to Livadi Beach on the northern outskirts of Paros Parikia for lunch with Anne-Mal and their kids, Lisa and her kids, and Mel and Alexia. We also finally got to meet Nico who was having lunch with some Swedish friends (he was quite busy doing the night shift at Manamana). There was a cement jetty that jutted out into the water which was a great venue for leaping into the water. 

Anne attending to a wet Jack. 

Luca and Alexis doing that shadow thing again... 

20 September: Today we decided to go and explore the southwestern portion of the island, and after bit of to-ing and fro-ing, we landed at a delightful beach called Tripiti Beach. Part of our selection criteria was to try to find the most likely spot with the clearest azure waters. This portion of the island is the least populated, and hence by induction ought to be the clearest. Beautiful spot, beach had coarse sized-sand that also assisted in its clarity. Here are the kids having a swim with Robsie gazing at the beautiful easterly view across the sea to the island of Naxos in the background.

This outcrop of rocks was great for diving with waters well below 3-4 m depth. 

And the coarse grained beach allowed for suitable rocks to be collected for creative designs to be made...  

We then met up with Mel, Nico and Lisa for a nice lunch at Agia Arini Beach. Thanks Nico for a very nice traditional meal. Afterwards we rendezvous'ed with Mel and Alexia for a sunset dinner on the Paros Parikia waterfront. Great sunset, here's a pic before the arrival of Mel and Alexia. 

21 September: Well today was departure day on the 11 am ferry to Mykonos. We met up with everybody for an early morning get together at Krios Beach near Mal and Anne's pad. The Fremantle Dockers were playing the Sydney Swans for a spot in the Grand Final against the Hawthorne Hawks. Mal is a Fremantle supporter (as are all the Griswold's except for Sam who is an Eagle's supporter) and Anne worked her internet handiness to bring us the action live in Paros! Here are the footy enthusiasts enthralled with the contest (Freo won the game, but unfortunately lost to the Hawks in the Grand Final the next week, next year Dockers!). The game served as a blessing as it provided the perfect distraction to not get overly sentimental about our imminent departure. We had a great 8 days and nights in Paros. It was great to catch up with Mel and Alexia so much, to meet Lisa, and to get to know Mal and Anne and their kids better. What a fantastic island with a lot to offer. We were really appreciative of all the time that Mel spent with us and her suggestions for things to do around the island during our short stay. Seez youz all back in Oz upon our return (Anne, Mal, Annabelle, Alice and Jack) or your visit (Mel, Alexis, Nico).

The ferry ride back to Mykonos and pick up by our accommodation staff went smoothly until we arrived at Flaskos Studios where a large baptism party (the proprietor's little girl) was underway. We left our bags in the room and rapidly headed off to Agios Stefanos Beach below the accommodation, which had quite a vertical distance down, but short horizontal distance (i.e. steep) with a large-ish number of stairs.

We then chilled out at the Taverna above the beach for a bit.



Luca in front of the nice view from the Taverna.

There was a great pier for the kids to jump into deep water, here's a shot of Luca leaping in...

Sam getting some big air.

Sam showing off his newly acquired diving skills.

And Frankie showing off her stuff...

 

A wedding party on a boat then cruised by...

Mykonos has a different vibe from Paros as exemplified by this large cruise ship behind Frankie during our departure from the beach. No cruise ships seemingly go to Paros, our preference...

 

The pool was integrated into the accommodation complex with a nice bar and small restaurant with great food. Kids having a late afternoon swim after the beach.

  

22 September: The life of a blogger, here's me in the early morning (6ish am) hours blogging away, captured unawares by Robsie. Most of my blogging effort is during the early morning and late nights for obvious reasons. This particular venue was more than acceptable for pondering past destinations.

Our primary reason for coming to Mykonos for several nights rather than staying comfortably in Paros was to get a bit of the Ancient Greek Culture thing. We were not spending anytime in Athens, so Delos was our opportunity because of its proximity to our flight departure location. Delos over its history served as the centre of the ancient Greek religion, the reputed birthplace of Apollo and Artemis, later became the ancient Mediterranean world's centre of finance, and was the birthplace of currency (e.g. the first Wall Street). So we headed over on the short ferry ride and had a tour (the way to go as this site was rampaged over the last several millennia by foreign armies and later local folks utilised the materials for their existence, so a guide is essential to appreciate the ruins). It is an impressive site and the tour provided a lot of insights to this incredible historical place. Here is a pic of Sam and I enthralled by the details provided by the tour guide.

Needless to say, though the tour was interesting to some of us Griswold's, the two girls thought that jumping from 2 millennium old blocks to 2 millennium old blocks was preferable.

Merchants from the far reaches of the Ancient Mediterranean world came to Mykonos to sell their wares, and this small island had a permanent population of over 30,000 people during its heyday. With so many seafaring men and unscrupulous merchants, the need to satisfy primal urges naturally occurred and as with any good urban planning, a teeming brothel district was available. This picture shows a phallic symbol that points to the 'red light' district of ancient Delos, which could still be readily identified at most of the existing corners of the narrow streets. 

The highest peak on this small island is Mount Kynthos (112 m, 367 feet) and naturally that was our ultimate destination. Here's a pic of us making our way to the top. Wonderful view of Mykonos to the east, the islands of Paros and Naxos to the south, and Tinos to the north.

And a view from the departing ferry of the ancient city site with Mount Kynthos in the background.

As per usual our excursion in the hot sun left the kids plumb tuckered out, here's a pic of Luca getting some zzzzsss as we roll into the port of Mykonos on the ferry.

After an excursion through Mykonos town (and a sighting of Serena Williams doing some shopping at the posh stores in this glamour town), we made our way back to our accommodation for some pool action, drinks and dinner. Here's Frankie happy to be back at the pad doing these less exerting activities.

What a great trip to Greece, Paros is a beautiful spot with wonderful people and friends. It was a great boon for the kids to meet up with other Perthian little folk and Alexia for Luca for a lot of memorable times. Delos provided a bit of ancient cultural understanding of the wonderful legacy that the ancient Greeks imparted to Western Culture that still manifests itself to this day. The Griswold's will definitely be back to this part of the world!

 

Well next up a big travel day to our next destination, the island of Ischia off of Napoli, Italy...