Five days earlier
Friday 5 September 2025
Flight
I arrived in Athens on Wednesday evening, after nearly two whole days of travelling. To explain: Calvin found and paid for all of the flights, using points as much as possible, and making sure that I had a pleasant, if somewhat indirect trip from Sydney to Athens. The first leg was Sydney to Taipei, the second was Taipei to London. Then an overnight stay at a hotel near Heathrow, where I had a terrible dinner and a brilliant night’s sleep. Then London to Paris, then Paris to Athens. I had lovely seats, and lounge access at all the airports, but by the time I landed in Athens, I was tired and grumpy and in no mood to put up with the inexplicable lack of signage at the airport metro station.
Athens
So I caught a cab to my hotel in Athens. It was near Syntagma Square, right in the middle of everything, and surrounded by Japanese restaurants, not far from the Plaka and the Acropolis and basically all of the places that I wanted to visit.
But the first place I wanted to visit was the barber. It’s always fun to get a head shave and a beard trim when you’re abroad. This time, there were hot towels, a straight razor disinfected on an open flame, lotion, a massage — the whole thing. A fast way to recover from a slow voyage.
The food was good, and to my surprise there was a cute little gay bar just behind the hotel, with cheap two-for-one low-alcohol cocktails starting at 7 PM. A nice way to wind down before bed.
I was only in Athens for a couple of days, just to orient myself before heading off to unfamiliar places. I went to Athens last year with the School’s Classics Tour, and so I didn’t feel much pressure to visit every museum and every archaeological site. But I had to visit the Acropolis again, didn’t I?
Paros
On the Saturday morning I caught a ferry to Paros. I didn’t really know what to expect, but I really liked it. I stayed in the main town — once called Paros but now known as Parikia. It’s touristy, sure, but it’s a little town full of those white and blue buildings characteristic of the Cyclades, and there’s a long strip of inexpensive restaurants lining the bay. This is where, for the first time, I accomplished my mission — to sit by the water, read a book, drink beer and eat souvlaki.
I got to see some other places during my four-day visit. First, Antíparos. This is a much smaller island facing Paros across a narrow strait. I caught a ferry there one morning on a rare whim and walked the length of the shopping district. It’s very pretty, but much fancier than Parikia and a bit less chill. I kept walking after the shops ran out, and I came to a beach on the other side of the island. It was 30ºC, but I had no swimmers, so I stood in the cool blue water for a while before heading back to the ferry.
Also fancier than Parikia was Naoussa, a beautiful fishing village in the north of the island. Nick and Dina suggested that I should go there at night, when there are dancers and nightlife and young people, but I’m on holidays and I absolutely insist on being in bed by then, so I went there first thing in the morning. It was beautiful, and definitely worth a visit, but I ended up going back to Parikia in the early afternoon for a beer and a late lunch.
I liked Paros a lot. The hotel was really pleasant, and the young man who ran it was friendly and generous and full of helpful advice. The food in Parikia was simple and inexpensive, the water was beautiful, and once you got away from the port itself, everything was quiet and relaxed. Four days wasn’t enough: I would definitely like to go back.
Syros
‘Well, what you have to understand, young lady, is that the Greeks, not content with dominating the culture of the Classical world, are also responsible for the greatest, some would say the only, work of true creative imagination produced this century as well. I refer of course to the Greek ferry timetables. A work of the sublimest fiction. Anyone who has travelled in the Aegean will confirm this. Hmm, yes. I think so.’
I arrived on Syros late — the ferry from Paros was delayed by over an hour, for a journey that was only supposed to take just over an hour. Still, I have an app, which tracked the ferry’s slow journey from Naxos and which set my mind at rest during a brief panicked moment when I thought I had failed to get off at my stop. (Clearly neither Douglas Adams nor St John of Patmos had access to this app.)
Ermoupoli is the biggest town in Syros and the capital of the South Aegean region. It’s not a tourist spot like Parikia, it’s a proper town where people live, with shops and offices and a port full of massive cargo ships. And it doesn’t have those blue and white Cycladic buildings: instead, it consists of a pile of neo-Classical buildings set on the side of a hill so big that I have no intention at all of climbing to the top to visit the two enormous churches there.
I’m in my hotel room now. It’s very small and grimy, with a minuscule bathroom and very slow wifi. It does have air conditioning, which means I can retreat to it every few hours for an awkward shower when everything starts to get too sweaty.
I don’t really plan these trips at all. I still don’t know where I’ll be staying at the end of next week. Which is why I ended up in a terrible hotel room in Ermoupoli with no real idea of what I would do for five days.
It’s basically 30ºC every day, and the sun is relentless. But before I got to Syros I had only been swimming once, at a bar in Paros just a mile from the hotel, where I had a beer and went for a swim while the bar staff guarded all of my precious electronic devices.
But this grimy hotel has beach access, if by beach you mean an old concrete jetty jutting out into the bay. And so I can leave my devices in my hotel room and walk down and swim in the cool blue waters of the Aegean, which I’m doing twice a day. In the morning, after my first swim, I go to the terrace on top of the hotel where I can dry my clothes, look down at the beach and read my book.
