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It´s been many years since my last blog, but that does not mean that I haven´t been anywhere. In the past year alone I have been to Germany, Denmark and many little villages and cities in Spain. I´ve just been too busy or lazy to write about them. However, I´m going to try and blog this two-week Greek island hopping trip.
With our bags backed and passports in hand we left Campello and set off for the train station. Our flight to Athens was leaving from Barcelona so we needed to make our way there. Everything was going well until we arrived at the train station in Alicante and Javi suddenly announced that he had left his phone back in the apartment. With only thirty minutes before our train was due to depart it was very unlikely that his phone would arrive in time. Javi tried to change our train tickets but since we had purchased the cheap tourist tickets we were unable to. I sat "patiently" on the train whilst Javi was outside waiting for his sister. Javi´s sister arrived 5 minutes after our train had left, fortunately Javi gave up waiting for her and joined me on the train condemned to a two-week holiday without his precious iPhone.
This rest of the trip to Athens went without a hitch and we arrived in the capital of Greece bright eyed and bushy tailed, ready for our adventure. Our first stop wasn´t Athens itself but an island of the coast, called Paros. We made our way to the port of Piraeus on the outskirts of Athens at 7am. There was a ferry leaving at 7:15 to Paros but due to circumstances out with our control we were unable to catch it which left us sitting in the scorching sun at the port until 14:00 waiting for the next one. At 7am the port is lively with all the overnight ferries arriving and the early birds catching ferries to exotic destinations. By 8am the place is dead and there is absolutely nothing to see or do. It was like this until 14:00 when we finally caught the boat that would take us to where we wanted to go.
For our first night in Paros we stayed close to the port, mainly because we knew we were going to be tired after travelling for nearly 30 hours and it also gave us the opportunity to see two different parts of the island. To be honest, at the harbour there isn´t that much to see but lots of restaurants along the beach and that is where we found ourselves on our first night in Greece.
The next morning, we took a walk around to visit the church and the square and to pop into one of the many bakeries for some "light" breakfast. Apart from Greek yoghurt for breakfast the majority of the options are pastry based products, either with sausage, cheese or spinach.
Naoussa was our next stop, about a 25-minute bus journey away. This is my opinion is much nicer than where we had spent the previous night. The small white town is adorable, with its labyrinth full of tiny shops. There were many jewellery shops as well as clothes and shoe shops. I bought myself a great pair of sandals from one of these wee shops.
If you manage to get yourself out of the labyrinth and you make it to the shore, you´ll find yourself in a relaxed, peaceful fishing village. The fishermen in the morning were tending to their nets whilst some older women sat chatting away watching the world go by. Apart from the shops there is a little fort in the sea that you can walk out to but generally we found ourselves just lapping up the tranquillity of the place, at least during the day.
Later on in the day we headed to a nearby beach called Santa Maria, which was a short bus journey away. We didn´t stay long because we have beaches in Spain and it wasn´t why we were in Greece but it had been recommended by the owner of the apartment we were staying in. Another typical thing to do on the island is to hire a motorbike/quad/buggy, we didn´t, due to not having that much time but it would be a great way to see the rest of the island. We chose instead to go for a 10km hike to nowhere. We decided just to walk and see where it took us, and it took us to a not so interesting historical site, Mycenaean akropolis. We followed the signs out of Naoussa and along the coastline heading east, after about 5km we came across the site, but apart from a mountain of rocks we couldn´t see anything else. However, it was a very nice walk and it got us out and about that evening.
Now, this peaceful fishing village that I mentioned earlier doesn´t exist in the evening. It becomes a lively, vibrant town, where, without a table reservation in a restaurant you won´t be able to eat. After trying a fair few different places, we ended up off the winding streets and up near the church where it becomes less crowded and possible to find somewhere. So beware, if you are keen on trying the local delicacies with a view of the water, then book in advance.
A bus back to the port the next morning to catch our second ferry of the holidays to Naxos.
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