Greek Island Hopping Adventure, Paros, Parikia & Marble Quarries..AntiParos.

This is morning we went into Paros main Town, Parika and up to the remains of the Kastro, this was again in the middle of a labyrinth of typical Cycliad streets. The remains of this Castle clearly show the evidence that it was built using the ancient columns and remains of temples.
The other thing worth seeing in Parikia is the Church of the Ekatondapyliani. At this large Byzantine church we witnessed a Christening, it differs from a C of E christening in that the baby was striped naked and put into the font as if it was having a bath. As you can imagine the baby did not think much to this cold bath, but soon appeared smiling in her new white christening outfit.
We then went up to the Village of Maranthi to the Marble Mining works, really more like a cave. The entrance is a sheer drop down into the earth and you soon need to have a torch to see, and you really should have good walking shoes on your feet. It is very steep and the floor of the cave is slippy, you can go in one entrance and out the other, but it looked a bit dangerous without a guide so I did not brave it. If you want to do the underground walk the book Greek Island Hopping 2010 has a map of the mine and full instructions.
We spent the afternoon at the Hotel pool, even though the wind was starting again, this pool is protected by the glass windbreaker, so it proved to be a pleasant place to sunbathe.

The next day we were able to take the quad on the ferry from the Paros port of Pounda to Antiparos.
In Antiparos, a very small, quiet Island. It did not take long to see the square shaped Kastro and visit the Great Cave.I am glad I did not stay on Antiparos as there was not that much to do and the beaches seemed to be very poor. We had seen all of the island by midday, so took the 7 minute ferry trip back to Paros.
We had experienced three wind free days, but this morning its blowing a gale. Gusting up to 40 or 50 km. But the Paros beach called Golden Beach offers some protection from the wind, and the wind surfers and kite surfers were making the most of it, if they went any faster they would be in Naxos.
We spent the next two days on golden beach and on our last day called in the very picturesque port of Pisso Livadi, where we enjoyed a long and very tasty lunch at Stavros Taverna.

Comments

Popular Posts