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Previously on "I originally thought this was all going to fit in one blog post because I have no concept of my own wordiness":
Greece Part 1
Greece Part 2
Welcome to Greece Part 3, which in true testament to the aforementioned wordiness is somehow only about stop #2 on our Greek expedition. After two nights in Athens, we boarded an early morning Blue Star ferry and docked at the island of Paros a little before noon. I had seen a few horror videos about choppy waves, extreme motion sickness, and chaotic mobs, but our overall ferry experience was uneventful (our boat looked just like this). Leaving our suitcases in a shared luggage rack was a little unnerving, but thousands of passengers do it every single day, so I put it out of my mind. We had no issue locating our belongings again after docking, though I would never leave any valuables or a bag without a lock in the unattended cargo area.
But my main concern about traveling by ferry wasn't unattended baggage, it was my tendency for motion sickness. I religiously purchase window seats on planes to lower the risk, but the ferries we took pre-assigned specific seats with no option to select a location. My friend Rachel from Right Direction Adventures has been on a lot of cruises, so I asked for her advice before I left. She recommended these patches from Amazon, and they worked great. You can put them behind your ear or just below your belly button and wear them for up to three days. A+ recommendation. They were effective, never became loose, and were much more convenient than having to time pill doses.
Our rented apartment was a 15-minute walk from the main port in Parikia and was absolutely perfect with an above and beyond host. It was nice to be removed from the main hub for a quiet stay while still only being half a block from the beach. The walk back into town had an immediate backdrop of the Aegean Sea peppered with sailboats, so it hardly felt like a chore.
Apart from the food and cats, Paros was incredibly different from Athens. There were no big buildings, no historic ruins, no trains, and very little Uber/Taxi availability. All of our transportation was done by foot or public bus, and that first winding, steep public bus adventure was all it took to turn me into a devout motion sickness patch user in every vehicle for the rest of the trip. The architecture style was exactly what we had expected from Santorini: white Cycladic houses, stone streets, blue domes, and plumes of pink bougainvillea, all without the sea of tourists. It was the perfect destination to see everything we had expected and hoped to find in Greece, but with the added bonus of feeling like we had it all to ourselves.
While in Paros, we visited:
Parikia
Lefkes
Naoussa
Antiparos
As I've already mentioned, Parikia is the main port town where all of the ferries dock and also had the main bus terminal. The main strip was over a mile of flat walkway right up against the beach with ocean on one side and tavernas, mini markets, and shops lining the other. Venturing down any side street led into a tight-winding maze of white stone clothing and jewelry shops. My already poor sense of direction was rendered completely useless as there were no parallel streets or patterns that I could discern, just what felt like infinite branches of a vascular system of scenic retail therapy.
During one particularly busy day, my friends decided to rest in our room before venturing back out for dinner. I couldn't bring myself to miss a moment of daylight, so I spent a couple of hours exploring Parikia on my own. I never felt unsafe, and I loved taking my time to find the perfect souvenir in all of the shops (after seeing prices in Santorini and Crete, I wished I had picked up a few more in Paros). I found a cute romper on sale and was immediately accosted by a cat when I exited the shop with a bag. All of the cats we had seen up to that point had been a lazy, quiet presence; this one meowed at me relentlessly as though demanding to inspect the contents of my bag. "There's no food in there, I promise," I told him. He argued back loudly, I continued to have a totally unhinged conversation with this cat by myself in the middle of the public walkway, and he finally let me go in peace after I bent down and scratched behind his ears.
Lefkes was in the center of the island and was one of the few landlocked places we visited. I tried to do research about each of our destinations before going to Greece, but to be honest, I don't recall ever hearing about Lefkes until Yelena mentioned it when we were already in Paros. It was definitely a passenger princess moment that I can take zero credit for, but I'm glad that she did whatever homework led us to one of my favorite stops. Where Parikia had winding streets full of adorable shops, Lefkes was more residential. The bus dropped us off on a main road, but everywhere we wandered after that was built with narrow and occasionally steep walkways inaccessible to cars (we still had to watch out for mopeds). The entire town was 100% white Cycladic houses and shops with pops of blue, pink flowers, and lots of cute potted plants. Literally everything looked postcard perfect. There were very few tourists and just enough shops and restaurants to make us feel like we weren't just creepily wandering around a private neighborhood. I hardly saw enough of Greece in two weeks to discern what is truly "authentic," but Lefkes felt like a glimpse into traditional Greek island life that wasn't putting on a show for tourists or trying to lure us into mediocre restaurants and price-gouged souvenirs.
We didn't spend enough time in Naoussa for me to give it fair representation, but I'll tell you what I can. Naoussa is another coastal town full of shops and sailboats and has more of a reputation for an active nightlife scene. We showed up just in time to catch the sunset after a downpour, then Google mapped our way to a restaurant that turned out to be closed for the season. We pivoted and had sushi for dinner instead, which was quite possibly the only meal we had the entire trip that didn't include feta. Every inch of Naoussa that we saw was made up of shops and restaurants tightly sandwiched along the narrowest walkways yet. Despite arriving in the evening, all of the shops were still open and lively by the time we took a 9pm bus back to Parikia. My personal favorite moment was our first taste of loukoumades, a popular Greek dessert made of fried dough balls traditionally drenched in honey, but also available in a massive variety of other toppings.
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| Parikia, Lefkes, and Naoussa |
While I'm grouping Antiparos into part of our Paros experience, it is technically a separate island about a mile ferry ride away. We took an express ferry to the main town, then hopped a bus to the more remote location of St. George for lunch at Captain Pipinos. It became apparent very quickly that we were visiting in the extreme off-season. There was almost no one else on our bus, and our driver passed a beach stop with the explanation "You can stop here if you want, but nothing there will be open." St. George was the last stop of the route, and we were dropped off on what looked like a deserted dirt road flanked by tumbleweeds and chickens. There were two Tarvernas to the left and beaches to the right. We explored the beach first and were met with a wide open dusty expanse of nothing that I can only assume is a parking lot on busier days. There were two main beach access areas with absolutely gorgeous water and only one other person in sight.
Lunch at Captain Pipinos was one of my favorite meals of the trip. I can't remember all of what we ate, but all of it was top tier. Mussels saganaki and octopus orzo were standouts, and this was where we tried the fried feta covered in honey. I remember loving the grilled fish, but I couldn't tell you which one we ordered.
After lunch we took a bus back to the main town and wandered for about an hour. Almost every shop was having an end of season sale, and one upscale boutique owner told me everything was 50% off because it was the last day they would be open. Several shops were already closed or had boxes stacked outside, clearly packing up for the cooler months. It felt like an unexpected treat to visit a completely deserted beach and to enter shops without having to fight my way through a crowd, but I'm curious if Antiparos would have felt totally different in a busier season.
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| Antiparos |
