Antíparos

Antipiros is an island very close to Piros. We had signed up for a tour from the resort and left this morning with two American ladies and our guide, Stamos. He owns the resort with his wife, Maria, who was the chef at the cooking night. We got considerably better at understanding his English as the day went on. He referred to our group as 'homogeneous' which apparently meant that we got along well together. Another interesting phrase was that he didn't want to get 'corroded', or in our terms, rusty, so he did the tour every week.
It was a short ferry ride to get to Antipiros and we did some sightseeing and then got on another small boat to go to the island of Despotico. There are no people living on this island, but 1000 goats roam it. There is a big archeological dig there, where they have uncovered a temple dedicated to Apollo dating to about 1500 BC. Stamos was extremely knowledgable about this site as he has made quite a study of local archeology. The temple was destroyed after Christianity came. The Venetians in the 1300's took away a lot of marble to be used in their own Castle and surrounds in the town on Antipiros. They continue to excavate and depend on donations for much of the cost. Tom Hanks and his wife have made huge donations to this and Stamos showed us their house later, on Antipiros. After leaving Despotico our boat captain took us to see the cliffs and the sea caves on the coast of Antipiros.
We had lunch at a taverna and let Stamos do the ordering so we could try many local dishes... calamari, small fish, soft cheese, deep fried zucchini, mashed fava beans and a warm green salad.
We did a short walking tour in the town by the ferry to see the Venetian castle and all of the marble pieces scattered around that had come from Despotico. Stamos thinks many of these should be returned for the restoration there.
Our day ended with a visit to a ceramic shop back on Paros. Beautiful pieces, all hand done by the owner.
It was a great day!!Read more