Greece

Temple of Athena, on the Acopolis

 After five months of not posting anything, the time has come to finish up In Search of Gelato. I gave myself a tentative deadline of finishing up by Labor Day. Then by Thanksgiving. Then by New Year's. I'm hard fast on this new deadline because my goal is use one of the Blog to Book companies to print out this entire blog, giving us a nice, coffee table memory of our time in Italy. And for some reason, the tiny remnants of OCD I have left somewhere in this befuddled, tired brain of mine are screaming out that it is just not right to have posts written in a completely different year. So I have roughly 12 days to cover our final months.

Nora Visits the Parthenon

The posts I've been writing in my head recently are all about our last, big vacation before leaving Italy. I blogged a tiny bit on the go, but it was to Greece. Just a quick reminder intro:  Room With A View - blog post about our first day in Greece, an afternoon in Athens

Night View from our hotel room - it was so vibrant and such a great mix
of the masses of people in modern with the ancient world staring down.

Oh what a view that was! We could have spent another day in Athens visiting the museums, but it was hot and crowded...and it was Island Time! We headed back to the airport after our brief afternoon in Athens and got on a little puddle jumper to the island of Paros. Why Paros? Who in America has even heard of Paros? Not us. Figuring out where to go for our final trip was incredibly hard. The pressure of planning epic trips for every single holiday, both big ones and small weekend ones, had worn me down. Add to that the stresses of being a new Mommy, and I just could not even think of where to go. But considering this trip would take place over my 40th Birthday, I wanted it to be fabulous, darling. With wonderful memories of our 2011 trip to Crete, we eventually agreed on a Greek island. But which island? My long criteria list included family friendly, quick access from Athens, easy access to a beach, quaint town large enough to keep our interest for a week, architecture in the traditional white washed buildings from postcards, hotel with a pool, and access to ferries for day trips to other islands. I'd been to Santorini on a day trip from Crete, and while it was gorgeous and beautiful and amazing, the two most gorgeous towns are on the top of a dormant volcano rim with access to the water via a crowded cable car or a donkey. That is not a typo. After reading about every island option, Paros won out. Virtually unknown on the American travel circuit, it is quite popular with the Brits and French as well as being the island the Greeks visit when they go on vacation. Sold.

Paros airport - the tiniest "real" airport we've ever visited;
In Costa Rica once, we took a flight out of a one street town where the
airport airstrip was located a motorboat ride away. The airport airstrip
did have a building, but it was clearly unused. And our boat driver normally
stays until the plane arrives, but he had to get back to the hotel. Then our plane
didn't arrive. No phone, no boat, no way to alert anyone anywhere that we were
abandoned at the airport airstrip. Finally, from across the wide river, a staff member
from a fancy resort that we could not even see noticed us and brought a boat over to
tell us that the plane was fogged in back in San Jose. Since we had a connecting flight
in San Jose to get down to the south of the country, we were concerned. The staff member
said he'd keep an eye on us and come back if they found out the plane wasn't coming at
all. The plane finally arrived at the airport airstrip, took us to San Jose, and there, we
found out that although we'd missed our connecting flight down south, the airline
had arranged for another, unscheduled plane to take us and one other man.
Another plane! Not "Too bad, here are your options for tomorrow," but instead,
"Your personal plane will be here in one hour."
The Paros airport is indeed an actual airport, complete with two clerks who double
as Ground Control crew, and possibly Air Traffic Controller.