Day 3 in Paros, we took the bus to visit Parikia, the capital and main port of Paros. Unlike the bus to Lefkes, our bus was full and I should say overpacked. There were people standing; a lot of young passengers had luggage so I am guessing they were heading to the ferry to go to another island or back home. On the way, there were more high school/college looking people waiting at the bus stop with their luggage but the driver had to tell them to wait for the next bus as ours was so full. He was speaking Greek to them so our guess was right, Paros is very popular among high school/college students for summer vacation.

We arrived Parikia, it was busy with both locals and tourists. There were locals selling fruits and vegetables right across the street from the ferry port. We saw the huge watermelon and wish we have the room and tool to eat it at our hotel room LOL.

We first walked to the post office so Jason can send the postcard to his friend and then to the old town. The old town in Parikia is like the opposite of Naoussa’s; it has more souvenir and clothing shops than restaurants. We don’t have any points of interest to visit so we just navigated on our own without a map. It was fun to find hidden photo spots away from the main shopping street. Bougainvilleas were scattered here and there where we stopped for photos.

We found this interesting bike made of wood outside a hotel.

The Venetian Castle doesn’t look like a castle at all located right in the old town.

There are quite a few little churches within the old town like the one below, it was hard to get a full view of its blue dome.

The main shopping street is filled with souvenir and clothing shops.

The bougainvilleas formed like a door to this side street:

We ventured into the more residential area through narrow cobblestone roads.

The narrow street is covered with bougainvillea petals.

We found this tree with lots of guava fruits.

Then, we were back to the main street again.

A cute gelato shop but it was closed.

A surprise hidden gem we found on the side street of the gelato shop: a cute little church with bougainvilleas.

Luckily, we carried our wide-angle lens with us so we were able to capture the full church and bougainvilleas.

Quite a creative location to build a garden!

Back out to the main street again.

Parikia’s old town is compact as well so we walked from end to end, even the side streets, and made stops for photos in less than 2 hours. It was too early for lunch so we decided to browse the supermarkets that we passed by early on when we walked to the post office to see if they have mango juice. Unfortunately, none of them has it and only one market sells the small box juice of mango mixed with other fruits. As we walk past the port, there were two huge Blue Star ferries docked.

After checking out the supermarkets, we walked back into the old town to have our lunch at Mana Mana where it was very busy. I picked this restaurant because I saw they have curry on their menu; after days of having pasta, I was craving white rice.

I ordered the chicken curry while Jason ordered prawns & mango curry.

Both were decent for a Greek island with not many Asian restaurants nor tourists. The total for our lunch plus drinks was €29 and we tipped €3. After the quick lunch and used the restaurant’s toilet, we went back to a few spots in the old town for photos as the lighting is better by the early afternoon.

This is probably my favorite spot, you have to look back when strolling along the shopping street to notice this church as the backdrop. A lot more tourists on the main shopping street so we had to wait for people to get out of the way. Surprisingly, not many tourists stopped for photos on this spot.

After the photos, we walked to the bus station (right next to the port) to wait for the next bus back to Naoussa. Buses were frequent between the two towns; every 30-40 minutes at peak times and an hour at other times. Once we got back to Naoussa, we went back to our hotel to relax and came out again for dinner which we tried out Allas Souvlaki for their gyros. We wanted to compare to the famous O Kargas that we had the night below. We both think that Allas Souvlaki is better, the meat is juicier. Their gyros are 10 cents more expensive at €2.90 each, still very affordable and filling!

Our 3 day stay in Paros was nice, we get to visit different villages and towns via public transportation. I do wish that our hotel is closer to Naoussa’s old town; we would be spending more time there instead of going back to the hotel to take a rest and not motivated enough to come back out walking under the hot summer sun without any shades for 10 minutes. So if you are visiting Paros especially during the summer months, I recommend staying near the old town of Naoussa 🙂