Tag: Greece

Last Tuesday we flew from Athens to Zurich and then from Zurich to San Francisco. It was a pleasant shock to see the green landscape of Switzerland after the brown hills of the last couple of weeks in Greece.

The line for departure control in Zurich was really long but we made our plane with no problem.

I love Global Entry. Once you have finished the application process you can enter the US by just having your face scanned. It is super fast.

In San Francisco we took BART to the East Bay where Allie and the grandkids met us. Than Duke drove home to Reno. There was fresh snow in the mountains and on the roads so it was a long drive but he made it!

I stayed in the Bay Area for a few days. I got to have lunch with Shannon and I helped with the Grandkids while Allie was on a business trip. I took Amtrak home on Thursday.

It’s nice to be home.

Monday morning we returned our rental car then went to find breakfast. We ended up at a restaurant overlooking the port and had a great breakfast.

Then we took an uneventful four and a half hour ferry ride to Athens and caught the metro to our hotel at Athens airport. Tuesday we start the long journey home. It’s been a great trip’

Almost every place we have stayed on this trip has included breakfast. The place we are staying for our second two nights on Paros does not. So this morning we drove down to a local fishing village and found a place for breakfast overlooking the harbor. It appeared to be full of locals. I had a crepe with cheeses and vegetables and Duke had pancakes with honey.

Afterwards we went for a walk along the coast.

Later in the day we drove out to find a beach to record a car review video. We ended up at Tripiti Beach where we stopped yesterday.

For dinner we went into the town of Paros and had a great dinner. We shared calamari with pesto and potatoes and sea bass baked with grapefruit, oranges and potatoes in paper.

The sunsets and moonsets in the Greek islands have been like nothing I have ever seen. I think it’s at least partly because there always seems to be a haze along the horizon.

It was only when we were questioning why sunset was at 5:20 instead of around 6:20 like it was last night that we realized that daylight savings time changed in Europe last night!!

Alexandros Apartments in Naoussa, on the north end of Paros, where we stayed the last two nights was great. What really made it special was Litsa, the owner. She gave us recommendations of things to do and recommended the fantastic Karina Restaurant. Litsa is why our stay on Paros will be so fondly remembered.

After leaving Naoussa we drove up to the very top of Paros where there are a church and lots of antenna towers. It was very windy and the view was amazing. We could see other island to the east and west (Nexos and Antiparos).

From the top of the island we drove down to the east. We stopped in the village of Marmara where we had coffee and treats at a local bakery.

Our next stop was the beautiful Tserdakia Beach.

Our hotel overlooks the west side of Paros. We had a beautiful sunset from our balcony.

We went into the town of Paros for dinner. We had very good fish again and had a baked apple with yogurt for desert.

We walked along the coast a bit before driving back to the hotel. As we walked the moon was setting.

Today this area of the Aegean Sea had twenty mile an hour winds. I’m glad we weren’t taking a ferry! We decided to take a hike in Paras Park. We went out to the lighthouse. It was a great hike. At times it was sheltered from the wind and at times it was blowing a gale!

We had such a great dinner at Karina Restaurant last night that we decided to go back again tonight. We told Karina that our fish last night was so good we wondered what she would recommend tonight. She told us what was fresh and we chose the mussels and the fried cod. They were devine!

And look at the bill €45 for mussels, fish, a bottle of sparkling water, a half liter of rose wine, a small lemon curd desert and an aperitif! And in Europe you don’t tip!

This kind of food, service and ambiance is why we travel. Karina told us that tomorrow night they will close for the winter.