Greece

Jun 2, the four of us at the Milan airport, where 4, Pappu and I found ourselves cursing Guanxi for the umpteenth time for missing out on the Greek leg of this trip. Number 4 began his obsession with Sparta the minute he heard the air hostess greet us in Greek, the next one week we would be travelling with an Indian mistaking himself for a Spartan from the era of Leonidas, a case of dual identity one could say.

We landed in Alexander’s country fairly late in the afternoon… the weather and the people showed a lot of promise. In some time we met up with our friend Xara at Kifisia who took us to the first authentic Greek restaurant I’d ever been to. It didn’t take us long to decide to have a souvlaki and upon running a quick cost-benefit analysis in our heads, it took us even lesser time to figure that the souvlaki would figure predominantly in our diets for the next 7 days. We met Aliki later in the day , who took us to a pleasant café where we had our first taste of Raki. No. 4 did get a little carried away and played holi with it, toppling it all over Aliki’s bag. We did beat him up later. That the Greeks are a very hospitable people became evident that very night itself, when Aliki’s mum laid out beds in the living room for us to crash. In the wee hours of the next morning, with a charming smile Mrs. Velliou made us some Greek coffee and we were off to Paros. The next 5 days would be a journey through tranquillity.

All we did at Paros can be summed in the following steps
• Wake up late
• Have a light breakfast
• Head to a beach, each day a different one
• Swim
• Return in the evening and take a shower
• Head into town for some great food
• Hit the clubs
• Hit the sack just before sunrise

When I look at these bullet points I know it does no justice to Paros or to the time we spent there. But that is the truth, we did nothing more and nothing less. And maybe there lies the beauty of the time we spent at Paros and the state of mind all of us were in, it is next to impossible to describe in words.