31st August and 1st September - Dubai to Athens and Piraeus to Paros

 We had a good flight to Dubai, if you can call a 14 hour flight good! We arrived at 4:25am and wandered around terminal 1 for a while before deciding we would head to terminal 3 to be closer to where we were leaving from. We used our airport lounge passes at Ahlan which was a good idea as there were not that many people there and it had a 3 hour maximum time rather than the 2 hour maximum at Marhaba. Our 10:50am flight was delayed by 30 minutes but we ended up making the time up on the flight to Athens. The Dubai to Athens flight was even better than our first leg as there was no turbulence at all and it was only 5 hours. 

It was a breeze getting through passport control and picking up our checked bags. We set off for the train station to get to Piraeus. The lady at the ticket counter was very helpful and was very happy when we told her this was our first time in Greece. She welcomed us and said she hoped we had a happy holiday and advised we only had to wait for 6 minutes till the next train departed. 

The train became very busy the closer we got to the CBD but cleared out again after that for the remainder of the journey. I used my downloaded google map to find our way to the hotel. The guy at reception helped us out with the location of a supermarket close by and a traditional Greek Taverna for dinner.


Dinner was nice, I had pork souvlaki and David had chicken souvlaki and we shared a 1/2 litre of rosé.

The next morning we had an early start, getting up at 5:30am for our 7:25am ferry. David managed to call Chris for Father’s Day before we left the hotel. It was an easy walk down to the ferry terminal as we had walked it the day before. Boarding the ferry was very easy and once on board we located our seats then went out on deck to see the ferry leave the dock and travel through the port past where we will be leaving on our cruise at the end of the month.





It was a smooth trip and the time passed quickly. We arrived at Paros at 11:30am and headed straight to the hotel and were lucky that our room was ready so we checked in and headed off to lunch.
 
Windmill at the port

Lovely bougainvillea outside our hotel
After lunch we wandered through the laneways of Parikia, passing many little boutiques and tourist shops, the Frankish castle, the church of 100 doors and a few more windmills.

Frankish castle built in 1260AD using parts of the archaic temple of Athena built in 5th century BC

Church also built using parts from temple of Athena


Tiny chapel off one of the laneways

Sunset from our hotel rooftop terrace
We ended the evening having a drink and watching the sun go down from the rooftop terrace.



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