Our almost two weeks on Paros and Naxos combined gave us plenty of opportunities to explore the islands and left us enough time to engage in one of our favorite lazy activities – spending a day on a boat off the coast. In fact, we did it on two separate…
Naxos may be the largest island in the Cycladic Archipelago, but it is still a fairly compact spot of land. With just a few days and a sufficient aptitude for driving on local roads, you can see most of what there is to see on Naxos. The past few entries…
The largest settlement outside of Chora, Filoti is another village that we stopped by for the first time only on our second stay on the island of Naxos. Its central geographical location ensures that all major roads on Naxos lead to Filoti, and a cluster of eateries on what could…
When we first visited Naxos, organized activities took most of each day – a guided tour, an island-hopping cruise, a sailboat ride. We did not need our own mode of transportation, nor did we really have time to explore on our own. On this return visit, we stayed longer and…
The road sign on approach calls it Απεραθου, which should be transcribed into Latin script as Aperathu following the Greek pronunciation rules. Google Maps calls it Απείραθος, which, accordingly, should be transcribed as Apirathos, and then gives its English name as Apeiranthos. Between indicating the second vowel as either “ei”,…
From the first minute that we set foot on Naxos, it has been our favorite island of the Cyclades, and its main town our favorite Greek settlement. As much as I prefer to explore new places on my travels – thus making Paros the centerpiece of this past summer’s Greek…
The word “anti” has been assimilated into the English language to mean roughly “being opposed to”, but its Greek meaning is primarily positional – “located opposite”. Thus, the name of Antiparos, one of the smallest inhabited islands in the Aegean Sea, which is separated from Paros by less than two…
Paros is not exactly tiny, but it is not big in any sense of the word. A week on an island of this size very easily leaves a visitor with a feeling of having seen everything there is to see. A local might certainly be able to point out the…
As I’ve been somewhat over-emphasizing lately, museums are a big part of my travel explorations. I always put a few potential targets on the map, research opening times in advance, and look for opportunities to stop by when in the area. One such target on Paros was the Museum of…
At the end of my photo-essay of Mykonos seven years ago, I included three different focal-length perspectives of the town of Naousa, as seen from the deck of a cruise boat. Those shots for years informed our desire to make Paros a target for a return visit to Greece. When…
For our week-long stay on the Cycladic island of Paros, we rented a gorgeous villa at the edge of Parikia, the island’s capital. Every evening, we went on a volta around the compact old center – you may be more familiar with the equivalent Italian term passeggiata – and probably…
Our stay in Athens this summer was almost entirely due to my desire to see the Acropolis Museum – we would probably have flown to the islands with no layover if not for that intention. The Acropolis itself is the can’t-miss sight in Athens, but the museum sits outside of…
Our trip to Greece this summer started with a full day in the capital city. It was planned specifically so that we could visit the Acropolis Museum, which did not feature on our first visit itinerary to Athens. Beyond that, we spent quite a bit of time reacquainting ourselves with Athens,…
We fell in love with Naxos from the first moment that we set foot on the island. It maintains the right balance of being lively without being overrun, even at the height of the summer holiday season. It is big enough and varied enough to offer a multitude of diversions.…
This is a pretty recent memory, not even a year old at the time of writing. But it is very illustrative of how the same place can be both most enchanting and most awful, depending on the time of the day. The village of Oia on the northern tip of…
I have now come to the end of my photographic material from the summertime trip to Greece. Over the course of a dozen and a half essays, we revisited places on Crete (Minoan sites, Heraklion, Psychro cave, other locations, not forgetting the unbelievable sunrise), on Santorini (Oia, including sunset, and…
The last ruins that we visited in Greece was Mycenae, the center of the Late Bronze Age civilization that was the main precursor to the classical Ancient Greek culture. Mycenaeans’ period of domination over the Mediterranean came around the time when the Minoan civilization – which we encountered on Crete…
Delphi was the sacred center of the world for the Ancient Greeks and undoubtedly a remarkable achievement of purposeful architecture, a sanctuary built into the challenging landscape to inspire awe and worship. Unfortunately, very little is left of its former glory, and the visual impact is fairly muted. After experiencing…
Three geographically dispersed monasteries in Greece are inscribed together on the World Heritage list as the great examples of the golden age of Byzantine art. We could only fit one into our itinerary, and our choice fell on Hosios Loukas, the largest and likely the oldest of the three. The…
I always find myself awed by grandiose edifices. Beholding the Parthenon up close, unfailingly grandiose despite its ruined state blended with a construction site, made the visit to Acropolis instantly worthwhile. Built in the 5th century BC to honor goddess Athena, the patron of the city, the temple survived rise…