The AHA Site Director for Athens, Rosemary Donnelly, generously offered us the use of her house on Paros, a fairly big island in the central Aegean. We took the giant "slow" ferry (which actually moves extremely rapidly) through very rough seas for four hours, arriving in Paros mid-day, in time to pick up our rental car, put our stuff in it, then grab some lunch.
Yes, you heard that right--we rented a car. Eric actually drove in Greece. As Rosemary had assured us, Paros was nothing like Athens. My confidence level was so boosted by this experience that I'm even considering renting a car elsewhere, on the mainland, although only if I can manage to completely avoid Athens.
Rosemary's house is on the other end of the island from Parikia (where the ferries dock), which meant a drive of maybe half an hour. Although a big island for the Cyclades, it's actually very small. Having a car to tool around in was perfect. We managed to mess up Rosemary's directions right at the end, but we got straightened out and found the house. And we were gobsmacked.
We were expecting perhaps a small house, no doubt beautiful if it belonged to Rosemary, but nothing like this. Can you tell that Annabel is amazed? The first shot is into the living room, the second out the living room door, the third looking back toward the island from the roof, and the fourth the living room and kitchen itself, into that same door. Don't worry, there will be more of the house and pool later. But you won't get any more interior pictures. And it's hard looking at it from outside to get a sense of just how big it really is. Rosemary owns it with her sister, who has a large bedroom, bathroom, and sitting room of the living room. Then there is the whole other wing where we stayed, two more bedrooms with their own bath. And there are more rooms and the garage in back that we never explored. All of this on 8000 square meters of land, most of it planted in olives, on top of a headland looking east across the channel to Naxos, and with spectacular views in every direction. Perhaps you can get some sense of the exquisite landscaping from those pictures. We were there at a good time, as flowers were blooming again after the hot, dry summer.
One reason the house doesn't look as large as it really is is that it keeps a very low profile. Paros is very windy, and the house is on top of a headland exposed to the north wind, so it's built close to the ground with its back to the north, opening to the south so that the large patio and pool areas are reasonably sheltered.
Reasonably sheltered. Remember those rough seas I mentioned? It was extremely windy, the windiest conditions I've every been in for more than a few minutes, and when the wind failed to die down after nightfall as I'd expected it to, we wondered if it was just always like this, and if so, how people could live in it. It turned out that this was an unusually windy day, and from Saturday morning on it got more and more calm, until by Sunday afternoon the water was like glass.
But we're still in Friday afternoon. And Annabel is determined to go for a swim. There are beaches on both sides of our headland, one in a small village, the other more isolated (and also somewhat protected from the wind), so we gave in to Annabel's request and went swimming here.
Annabel is on a mission, you see, to extend the beach season as long as possible. She made it into the ocean four times and the pool twice during those three days, sometimes under hazardous conditions, as you will learn. Swimming in a warm ocean, in a protected cove, on a cold and windy day, was nothing, although I was the first to be driven out of the warm water simply because my head was absolutely freezing. It was very much like being at Chena Hot Springs in winter on a -20 day: your body is loving the warm water, but your head can only take so much of the cold. We did a little beach-combing while we dried out, and then headed back up to the house to shower and dress. But as evening came on Annabel was determined to get wet again, and put her suit back on and went in the pool, perhaps more to prove something than out of any anticipation of actual enjoyment.
I show you pictures with both Alex and me huddled in the background not merely to emphasize how cold it was, but also to show views both of the house and of Naxos across the way. I got a little obsessed with the wind for a while, and the point of the third shot is to show the whitecaps in my wine glass. The water was crashing at the other end of the pool as well, but I didn't take a shot looking that way. Annabel didn't stay in long once she had proved her point--she took another shower to warm up, and we headed down to the beach and village in the other direction for a delicious dinner.
Oh, but notice that swimming suit, which Alex purchased for Annabel in Matala on Crete, because the suit she brought to Greece was getting too small for her, because the suit she was supposed to bring to Greece she left at the gym in Fairbanks. That little pink bikini was too big for her and fell off at every opportunity. More on that later.
When we woke up it was still windy, but the wind died down gradually all day, as I said. We had two days to explore the island, and decided to break it up into north and east on Saturday, south and west on Sunday. We headed up to Lefkes, the largest inland town and a former capital in the days of the pirates when there was something to be said for not being on the water. This village is absolutely beautiful, built on the slopes of the central mountain (and perfectly framed at night in our bedroom window below), with lots of tiny streets, the classic white-washed houses trimmed in blue (and occasionally other colors), a large church currently under reconstruction, and, of course, tons of cats. There was actually a greater density of cats on Paros than in Athens, and that's saying something. Annabel's camera battery died, so I had to take this one of a particularly aggressive kitten.
I could have wandered around Lefkes taking pictures for many more hours, but I was a little self-conscious about pointing my camera at people's windows. The town was eerily empty. We thought it was just because it was Saturday morning, but we heard later that there are actually lots of empty houses, some owned by people in Athens, others just unoccupied. Levkes is rather forlorn, although blindingly beautiful. Plenty of cats wandering those tiny, winding streets, however, as I believe I mentioned, and a lot of care taken with the appearance of the streets and houses, either for touristic purposes or because the people who do live here make the effort out of civic pride or aesthetic sensibilities.
We had one more stop to make before lunch, the fabled marble quarries of old Paros at Marathi, which produced the marble for the Venus de Milo, among other projects. The signs billed them as "Marble Ancient Quarries," so of course that's the term we used for them, full name only. We couldn't go down into the underground part, but Annabel climbed all over the upper sections.
We found out that night (from the same person who filled us in about Lefkes) that the white marble is all long gone from Paros, and the beautiful stone used in the floors, lintels, bathrooms, and elsewhere in Rosemary's house had come from Naxos. Which only increased the sense of melancholy I was feeling about Paros, a version of what I've been feeling often about Greece in general, something to do with the glories of the ancient past and the frustrations of the present economic situation juxtaposed in a way that is not really ironic, as I would tell my students, or even tragic exactly, but is certainly poignant.
That's a lot of pictures for you to download, and we're only about halfway through our time in Paros. Perhaps it's time for a break. We'll eat lunch in Naoussa while you let your download link cool off. And for those of you who've been studying your map of Paros all this time, Naoussa is on the north end. Wait, you don't have a map? Well, why didn't you say so?
http://www.parosweb.gr/map.htm
Rosemary's house is by Ampelas, on the northwest coast. See you soon.
1 comment:
Sorry it's so cold and windy there! I feel your pain. (note dripping sarcasm). Actually it's still double digits here (above zero!) and it's almost halloween, so... in yer face! :) Love the house.
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