Turkey and Back to Greece: Paros Part 1 – Naousa

This, at long last, represents the final tranche of posts for our September 2022 Turkey and Greece trip: a week on the Greek island of Paros in the Cyclades archipelago.

The Turkey and Back to Greece trip, as originally planned, was to be our first post-retirement travel excursion. The second WolfeStreetTraveler would retire in mid-August 2022 (the first had retired the previous year), and then we’d immediately spend a full month on the road – leaving in late August and returning in late September. After a week in Turkey, we’d spend 3 weeks island hopping in the Cyclades:

Paros for 1 week
Milos for 4 days
Folegandros for 3 days
Naxos for 1 week

But a perpetually problematic NOAA weather forecasting supercomputing support contract in the otherwise optimally operating Science & Engineering business run by on of the WolfeStreetTravelers had other plans. The recalcitrant actions of the most uncooperative data center and the most incompetent supercomputing vendor to ever play a role in weather forecasting would require, it turns out, another 6 months to address. So that WolfeStreetTraveler postponed retirement, canceled the Milos / Folegandros / Naxos legs of the trip (for which both the ferry fares and the hotel / AirBnB reservations were refundable, which was a relief), enjoyed the remaining first legs of the trip, then returned to work to dig in for another half year to pound on pernicious program problems.

But that’s okay – a week in Paros was unbelievably great. And we’d get to the other Cyclades islands later (in fact, they were supposed to comprise the second half of a 6-week trip planned later this year, but earthquakes in the area scared us off, so we’re hitting Mallorca and Andalusia instead, which should be pretty great, too). We’ll get back to the remaining Cyclades soon enough.

In Paros, we based ourselves in the town of Naousa at the north end of the island. Although the main city and ferry port on the island, Parika, held some appeal, our research suggested that Naousa offered more of what we were looking for; and we could always day trip to Parika (which we did).

And Naousa was absolutely perfect for us:

Although definitely a tourist town, Naousa still operated as a working fishing port

where the catch of the day would appear on your table for lunch and dinner.

For the entire week, we’d begin each evening with sunset cocktails on the water, then wander into town to find dinner. The best of these, which we’d patronize three evenings during our stay, was called – fittingly enough – Come Back. So we did. Again and again.

And for obvious reasons.

Sunset in Naousa from the Come Back beach:

And thence, into Naousa for some seafood.

Pretty great weather – mostly – during out stay. We did have a day and a half of super windy weather that was part of the normal weather cycle in the Cyclades, but that also was strong enough that it curtailed some activities.