Paros. September 4

Today we spent pretty much our entire day at the beach. We got up. We put on bathers. We got ‘cheese pie’ and coffee at the bakery and then claimed our sunbeds and umbrella at the beach. We pretty much just alternated between swimming in the very calm, warm water and laying on our sunbeds reading. It was so, so, so good.

At the tail end of the afternoon we decided to head back and have showers so we could go out for dinner feeling fresh.
On our walk into old town, we stopped to have a look at the 4th-century Panagia Ekatontapyliani (Church of a 100 Doors), which is the oldest remaining Byzantine church in Greece, and maybe the world? We are pretty sure we were told this, but don't quote us. According to legend, 99 doors have been found in the church and the 100th will be discovered only after Constantinople is Greek again. Although we also heard that when the 100th door is found, Istanbul will become handed back to the Greeks and become Constantinople.

Venetian Castle 

We got dinner at a restaurant recommended to us by our pension host, and it was super yum. We had moussaka, Greek salad, lamb pastry pot, and a local form of Saganaki with a jug of wine. We also had the most amazing view of the sunset from here and were very happy.

Ash teaching nosey cat a lesson through the classic ignore

After dinner we took a wander up the hill of the ancient Venetian palace, and into the lanes of the old town. We came across a gelato place and you know how that goes….
Oh also, some German tourist man weirdly stopped us from moving so he could take our picture. We think he thought we were locals, and then when we said we weren't he asked if we were Italian and ended up seemingly disappointed by our 'we're Australian'.

Ricotta and caramelised figs dreams

We got back eventually after having sat for a while at the port and did our best at sleeping with our slightly burned skin feeling a little bit tender.

Love A&E