On May 27 we headed (by ferry, of course) to the island of Paros where Christine had made reservations with the management of the Villa Katerina. They had quite comfortable apartments which we called home for two nights. The first night we enjoyed the opportunity to cook our own meals in the small kitchens and ate seated at the tables out on the terrace between the two apartments. The following day (the only full day we had on this island) most well documented portion of our entire time on the Cyclades is the day we spent in Lefkes and then the walk on the Byzantine road from Lefkes to the town of Piso Livadi on the coast. Here is a nice site describing Lefkes. We felt that we were virtually the only people in the entire town which made for some fantastic photography. We were prepared for a full day outing which made for a lot of baggage but when we were enjoying our lunch several hours later at the port of Piso Livadi, we were all very thankful! The water was a wonderful blue and the painted boats made the whole place pop with color. We hung out around on the beach opposite the port, occasionally wandering around in the deserted rocks under the cliffs behind the church and the streets in the sleepy town until about 5 PM when we caught an island bus back to the town of Parikia.
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The next day we packed up and headed for Mykonos by ferry again. We made some calls and had reservations at the Hotel Aoelos where the host was a very enthusiastic young man who let Christine use his Internet connection to chat with Francis. It was a very nice place except that it didn't have a view of the town and it was right under the path of the airplanes! We managed to walk the 1 to 1.5 mile hike up from Mykonos town several times in the two days we were there. Fortunately, we didn't have all of our baggage! On one of the visits to the town was just Greg, Christine, Domi and Antoine while the girls stayed back at the hotel and played in the swimming pool. They relished the "time off" during which Nikki painted scenes and flowers.
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An important fraction of our time on Mykonos is not well documented in these photos but very well videotaped and we have prints of the day trip we took to the island of Delos-the birthplace of Apollo and Artemis. Nikki, Greg and Christine climbed to the top of the We encourage those who are interested to visit a short virtual tour of this important archeological site on the web at . The density of pillars, statues, mosaics, other artifacts and complex engineering works from ancient times is really worth the journey. On the day we were there the conditions were such that the whole island was sprinkled with poppies and an assortment of other wildflowers giving it an added surreal element. Since we were so early in the season, there were very few other people on the island so the quiet, postcard perfect, tourist-free landscape is actually how we experienced it!
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Dominique and Antoine had quite an adventure returning to Athens that night on a red eye cruise from Mykonos. Fortunately, they were creative and made their flight back to Lyon on time. We stayed on Mykonos one more night and took the ferry back to Piraeus on June 1.