Naxos, Greece

Brea and I are fully into holiday mode now. We skipped the caves on Antiparos island so we could sleep in our 2nd day in Paros, which we did unti 12:30pm! Our hotel at Villa Galini was so peaceful that it was easy to sleep the morning away....We ended up taking the bus into Parikia (the port town we originally arrived at) and had lunch (I had an unfortunate Stage 3 meltdown), but after food and seeing the super old (1700 years) church there, we headed back to Naoussa for more beach time.

We took a boat taxi over to Kolymbithres beach across the Naoussa bay. For only a few euros, we got a boat ride on the bright and clear blue water and transportation - ideal! We decided to rent some lounge chairs and then we head into the water. This beach was perfect for me - no waves, shallow, clear water, very litle sea life, sandy bottom and warm temperature. I loved it! Eventually it was beer o'clock so we went to a nearby taverna overlooking the bay for an Amstel and a snack. It was 6pm or so, sunny and warm and felt more like mid-afternoon.

On a related note, we've decided that 10pm is the new 7pm here. Restaurants don't even get going until at least 9:30-10pm and here I am typing in an Internet cafe at 10:30pm and I'm starting to think about food.... This is made possible by sleeping in, the warm weather and late sunset, taking late afternoon/early evening naps, and generally adapting to the Greek timetable.

Anyway, back to Paros - after our evening drink and snack, we lay out in the sun until nearly 8pm and realised that there were no more taxi boats coming. Hm. I asked the only remaining Greek couple if they knew the boat schedule and they ended up offering us a ride back to Naoussa, which worked out really well. After internet time, showering and walking around the restaurants, we were seated at Mistral around 10:30pm on the Naoussa waterfront. This has been our most expensive meal so far, but also the best.

The next morning we had a reasonable sleep and got back to the port courtesy of Andreas, our hotel owner who was heading there anyway. Our ferry to Naxos was only 1 hour, which gave us enough time to catch up on our journals before disembarking and finding our next hotel manager and free transfer to the Old Town where we are staying here. We had reserved at Pension Sofi, but instead they gave us a room at their other location, Studios Panos, which was closer to the beach anyway, so we didn't mind. We are literally around the corner from the St. George beach, which has even warmer and shallower water than Kolymbithres! The owners welcomed us with several small glasses of their homemade wine, and fresh cut cucumbers and olives. Yum!

We've taken Naxos really chill.....lots of sleep, lots of beach time, late meals, a bit of shopping, cold beer mid-afternoon and wine tastings and hors d'oeurves on our private balcony as a post-nap but pre-shower and pre-dinner activity. Naxos is one of the biggest islands we are staying on, but we've been very content to stumble back and forth between the beach and our hotel room these past few days. Our most strenuous activity has been to find a place to do our laundry today, and we ended up handing it over to have done for us. We are just that lazy.

So, after a 2.5 hour nap this early evening, we are ready for dinner around 11pm. We check out tomorrow around 11-11:30 and our hotel owners will take our bags to the port for us, giving us time to get lunch and walk to the port at our leisure for our 1:15pm ferry to Santorini. We arrive around 3:30pm, find our hotel and then later on Wednesday night, Brea and I meet up with Kylie! She'll be with us the same days, staying in nearby, but different, hotels from us in both Fira (2 nights) and Oia (pronounced EE-ah, 2 nights). Should be fun!

And now....it's nearly dinner time...