Paros - Traditional Greece in the Cyclades

 Our port stop in Parikia on the island of Paros gave us our first look at the traditional white buildings of Greece since our initial stop on Patmos. We booked a walking tour of the town for this morning so we would have some down-time in the afternoon.

Our tour took us to the Panagia Ekatontapiliani, one of the oldest churches, dating back to the 4th Century A.D., as well as to an archaeological museum and then for a walk through some of the old streets.

The church dates from Byzantine times, to the year 326, and predates a lot of the excessive decoration found in Greek Orthodox churches. It is a startling change from the monastery churches at Meteora.

 Legend says that the church was founded by St. Helen, the mother of Constantine the Great, during her pilgrimage to the Holy Land. She stopped to worship at a chapel on the island. It is a pilgrimage church of the Marians, those who show devotion to Mary, the mother of God. The name means 'Church with the Hundred Doors', although only 99 have been found. There is a belief that the hundredth door will open when the Hagia Sofia in Istanbul becomes an Orthodox church again, as it was before it was converted to a mosque by the Ottomans.

The courtyard

The nave. This church doesn't have very
much decoration as it predates the establishment
of that practice

A niche of icons in the iconostasis

One of the small side chapels

These are talismans left when people offer prayers. The
man or woman would be left by someone looking for a partner,
the eye or eyes could be from someone praying to be cured from
a disease or having successful surgery

The baptistery, the Greek Orthodox version of a baptismal font, is one of the best preserved in the world and also dates back to the 4th century. This one is large because the Greek Orthodox baptismal tradition has always been full immersion.

After our visit to the Church, we walked around behind it, realizing just how large it looks from the outside, and entered the archaeological museum.

The Church from the back

The Archaeological Museum has many artifacts from all over the island, including pottery, marble sculptures, remains of columns used in Greek and Roman buildings, and even glassware from Venice.

This floor tile mosaic was once in the home of
a wealthy local

Some of the Venetian glassware

Even though the visitors aren't allow to touch the
exhibits, nobody told the local cats not to. This
one followed us around on our tour

There she is again, gracing the mosaic
floor with her presence

After our visit to the museum (and its bathroom...) our guide took us to another part of the old town with its small streets and many shops and cafes. She bought a box full of local sweets made with marzipan, and we each had a piece to try. After a short walk around to get oriented, our formal tour was over and we headed off to check out some of the little alleyways.

The display case of sweets our guide bought

Some of the little alleyways in the old town. Lots of picturesque spots, and quite a few large old bougainvilleas in full bloom.

We were back on the ship around noon, and I started working updating the blog. Larry was outside around 3:30 and noticed heavy smoke on the island. This is what was going on:

According to news sources I found online, it was a wildfire that was whipped up by winds that increased dramatically in the afternoon. There were some calls for evacuation in the area of its path, but the fire has now (Tuesday) been contained. It doesn't seem like there was significant damage anywhere. This kind of thing seems to happen regularly, as there were news reports of fires at some point during each of the past 3 years when I googled for this one.

And now for the bad news: the same weather system that brought all of this wind to Paros was also going to affect Santorini for Tuesday. We had already figure that out from looking at the weather forecast in the morning. Santorini is a tender port, and there was no way that the tender service could run safely in those conditions, so Crystal had found a substitute for us - Nafplion. In just a few short hours, the Shorex staff on board and at head office had come up with 4 options for tours.

We had decided to take a break from tours and just take the tender in to town, but the day dawned rather overcast with showers, so we ultimately decided to make it an in port sea day. According to AccuWeather it was supposed to get a little nicer in the afternoon, but that hasn't happened either. We walked around the Promenade Deck a few times instead of around the town. But at least now the blog is up to date!

Tomorrow we will be on Mykonos (hopefully, as it is still under the same weather system), and we'll have to pack for Thursday's disembarkation after our morning walking tour.