Paros

Santorini & Paros, the two islands we visited, are part of the Cyclades group of islands. In the map above, Santorini is at the very bottom and Paros is smack in the middle. Ok, now that we're all on the same page... Paros.

A three-hour ferry ride from Santorini brought us to Paros. It's less touristy than Santorini which means it's cheaper. That was a welcomed change! It was beautiful, but in a different way than the cliff-towns of Santorini. Paros had mountains but a lot more beaches. The beaches were fantastic! Everyone advised that the best way to see the island was by scooter. Obviously, we were too scared and didn't want to ride two to a scooter so we rented a dune buggy that looked like a go-kart / golf-cart hybrid.

It didn't go more than 35 miles an hour, but we rode around the entire island in about 6 hours. We got lost a few times and made a few stops along the way in the ports and beach clubs. The best stop was Santa Maria on the northern part of the island. I could have spent another five days or forever sitting on that beach.

This port, Pisso Livadi, was on the southeastern part of the island. It was a beautiful spot but I think Natalie and I were arguing about something while we were there, so I didn't enjoy it as much. Word to the wise: the shorter an argument can be, the better. Luckily ours didn't last longer than a few minutes and she was the best travel buddy I could ask for!

On our last day, Natalie and I went to the "Butterfly Valley". I wasn't expecting thousands of monarchs or anything but the butterflies were more like moths. It was still really cool, but a little underwhelming. 

We had dinner on the beach on our last night in Paros. It was such a special dinner! The next day was the roughest of our trip. We took a ferry back to Athens, waited in the airport for several hours and flew to Milan. We arrived a few minutes after midnight and wanted to catch an early train, so we slept in the Milan airport and took a 5:30 train to Milan Centrale.