A Perfect Day on Paros

Today was pretty much as good as it gets. I had the best sleep since we left home, maybe because we are outside of town where it is nice and dark and with a super comfortable bed. We’re staying in a cute little traditional white stucco house (one bedroom with a good sized open concept living/kitchen area) with cats, chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys and rabbits. And at least one very noisy rooster. The boys are in heaven. Even though it was after 10:30 pm, our host, Maria, met us at the dock last night and drove us to the house since we hadn’t yet rented a car. Maria’s daughter and husband were also waiting for us at the house and they showed us all around and left us with a huge bag of eggs. I took a picture of what was left this morning after we had eaten about a dozen. When I asked our hosts how many chickens they had, they just kind of shrugged! This is the nicest place we’ve stayed in yet - it has a beautiful outdoor kitchen with not one but two huge marble tables and benches, and a view over the Mediterranean. There is marble everywhere - the counters and floors, the patio. Even the roads and fences are made of marble. It’s the local building material! Parian marble was what a lot of classical sculpture and building decoration was made from, as it was prized for its translucency.

After a leisurely morning we took the boys for a short walk to a small archaeological site just a few hundred metres from us (photos above and on following page). It’s called Dilion and was the site of a temple to Apollo. From there we had views across much of the island and out to two other neighbouring islands, Siphnos and Delos. We decided to try taking a different road home, since it looked like it was going in the right direction. We found that it went right behind our house and then turned into a dead end, so we decided to cross a small field to get home - it turned into a bit of an adventure, especially for those wearing shorts as we had to walk through some prickly bushes and then hop a wire fence. We noticed a lot of different types of wild herbs and flowers growing so it was a very pretty smelling walk. It was a glorious 17 degrees and sunny all day. I got a slight sunburn on top of my other slight sunburn from yesterday, even though I was wearing sunscreen and a hat. The boys of course weren’t wearing anything but hats and are fine.

Since we needed both food and drinking water, Topher and I walked into town (about 1.5 km) to buy groceries and rent a car. We left the boys happily learning Greek on an app they downloaded today. We stopped briefly at Livadia Beach (pictured above), and also had a nice lunch (calamari, fried cod, skordalia and salad) at a restaurant that had few other customers, after passing by several that were closed for the season. It seems that the islands are even quieter in the off-season than the mainland. The waiter brought us some delicious yogurt with a sour cherry sauce for dessert.

When we got back Hugh excitedly told me that he had cooked six more eggs and fed them to the four cats that mooch around outside! They are the skinniest little things and are always begging for food, but never come in the house. Maria’s husband came by this afternoon and brought oranges and lemons, again in huge quantity. The boys set themselves the task of juicing all of the oranges and ended up with over a litre of juice. I had a nap for a good chunk of the afternoon, then woke up to have a glass of retsina, some olives and fried cheese while we watched the sun set over the Mediterranean (pictured on following page). Hugh made supper (with some help from Topher) and now we’re just relaxing before bed. It has been a great day!