Elena's first hike

And a little more besides.

We woke up on our first morning on Paros and headed off for the beach, our intended purpose in visiting the island, and one of Elena's favorite activities. As it turned out, things weren't as beachy as we had planned, but were, nevertheless, delightful.

First stop was Golden Beach. Proximal to our abode and looking quite nice. But the spirit of adventure was upon us, so we decided to venture further north and see what the beaches up there looked like. When we arrived "up there" it turned out there wasn't much beach, and what there was wasn't actually all that appealing. If you really needed a scrap of sand, it would do but... There were some lovely rocks to climb around on and the heather -- as it proved to be everywhere -- was in bloom and beautiful. The upshot was, in spite of the heather, that we didn't linger long. On our way back to Golden Beach, which was looking more "golden" by the minutes, we took a "brief" detour to check out the ruins of a monastery. And ended up on Elena's first hike.

There we were dressed for the beach, led upward over ever steepening rock faces, by a local mountain goddess.





No food, no water, and those Monks built their place __UP__ there. Elena was a champ. Walking most of the way herself. On the way up we got a good look at one of the local pigeon "lofts". "Old school" pigeon keeping in the truest sense of the world. These pigeon towers are designed with extremely practical intent. The birds enter and exit through the holes in the top. The body of the tower is hollow, with alternate bricks left out to provide nesting ledges. The birds live in the tower and a door in the base allows ingress for the farmer who can collect eggs, meat, and most importantly in these rugged, well farmed hills -- fertilizer.




The other popular local fauna -- appropriate to semi- barren hills -- goats, serenaded us with their bells the whole hike up. We later learned at a museum in Athens that the bells for the herd of goats are all selected to have a slightly different pitch and produce a pleasing melody. Both of those are things we can vouch for.

At last we reached the ruins, and the top! -- where fortunately we had a box of raisins for Elena to munch on. After taking in the views and marveling at the ruins, and the stamina of the monks, we headed back down.






Once again Elena walked almost the whole way by herself. It was quite a morning.



At the bottom we raided our beach supplies for some refreshing lemonade and headed into the town of Naoussa for a well deserved lunch. By this time it was, however, siesta time on Sunday and finding a restaurant that served the tasty fare we were looking for (NOT a club sandwich) and was open proved to be a bit difficult. Especially once we got into the winding lanes of the town (intended to foil invading pirates as they moved into the town from the sea, trapping them and making them easy pickings for the locals). We found some attractive little spots, but eventually we were easy pickings for a waterfront taverna where we had a nice, if late, lunch.





We headed back to the "taxi car" over the town canal (about a meter across) and Elena promptly fell asleep. So we took a brief driving tour up through the town of Lefkes and caught some spectacular views -- and some nice shots of dry stone walls and olive trees -- on the way down.




When we reached sea level again Elena was up, so we headed -- finally -- for Golden Beach and caught the last rays of the sun, and a swim, in the extremely pleasant, extremely clear, extremely salty (once you dried the salt crystals on your skin pricked you) Aegean Sea.






A successful first day on Paros!