I love Naousa...! Pretty blue and white buildings with clear waters, just like the cover of a travel magazine... Heaven.

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Getting up at 6am (which is really 4am in UK time) was rather painful, especially when you’ve had a bad night’s sleep as awake up on the hour, every hour worried that you’ll sleep through the alarm and miss the ferry! Despite being informed by the hotel reception lady that we were ’3 mins walk’ from the E7 gate of the port that we needed to get to, our walk took quite a bit longer and was via a super busy road filled with lots of cars and lots of whistle-blowing traffic police.

Pireaus port was total madness with lots of cars, lots of foot passengers and lots of confusion. We found/guessed at our right ferry and boarded whilst avoiding the chaos of cars, lorries and motorbikes that seem pretty determined to run over every single foot passenger that dared to get within a steering wheel turn of them. The ferry journey of four and a bit hours was a tad dull, but ‘borrowing’ airplane style seats to crash out on was totally necessary (as ‘standard’ passengers are essentially only supposed to sit in the cafeteria, on uncomfortable seats in the corridors or on the sun deck).

We arrived at Paros port and got off to a hut full of foot passengers waiting to board and then ran the gauntlet of accommodation people all shouting and holding signs up. Everyone claims to be ‘on the beach’ and have the ‘best accommodation’, but who can blame them. We had opted for the pre-book your accommodation in advance option, so smugly walked past everyone (ignoring the proposals of marriage?!) and found the taxi rank. Although the definition of a taxi rank is somewhat ambiguous when is consists of a massive queue of people and just the one taxi. The sole taxi driver asked us where we going and when we said ‘Naousa’ he told us to jump in… Surely this was too easy? Yes, it was as we squished in the taxi with another 3 Greek girls who were already in it! As we found out, no taxi in the Cyclades seems to only ever take one fare at a time.

Katerina Studios (with red doors, not blue doors) is a lovely place to stay. The accommodation is lovely and the views across the bay and of the harbor of Naousa are simply stunning. The owner, Katerina, the studios namesake is a Greek lady who is so friendly and will quite happily chat away to you in Greek - as her daughter is the one who speaks English to the guests etc - and all you can do is nod and smile at Katerina. We settled ourselves into the room, stocked up with supplies from the local shop across the road, had lunch and then because it was so hot, decided to head off to the beach…

Beaches in Naousa either involve a walk down steep steps to the local beach or taking a local fishing boat across the bay to one of two beaches (which are supposed to be better). We decided to walk down to the harbor and found the hut to purchase the boat ticket for going across the bay to Kolymbythres beach (as when we were sat on our balcony eating lunch that seemed to be the beach that most people headed in the direction of). The small fishing boats that you take are called ‘caїques’ or as we affectionally nicknamed them ‘cakes’, as our Greek pronunciation leaves much to be desired.

Kolymbythres is a gorgeous, busy beach with the clearest, bluest water I’ve seen in a long time; there were also lots of stones/rocks framing the edge of the water which provided alternative sunbathing options for those people who didn’t want/couldn’t find a sun-lounger! The water was quite warm and you could walk out for ages and still be able to stand up. This meant that my sister, who by her own admission isn’t the best lover of beaches, was very happy and was in and out of the water all afternoon.

A ‘cake’ was caught back to Naousa at about 6:30pm(ish) as we discovered that the timetable seems rather fluid, so it’s a case of trying to spot a ‘cake’ on the approach and then time your packing up and walk back to the jetty. The first evening in our room at Katerina Studios was spent drinking panaché (the French word for shandy, we learnt in Corsica last year) and having a DIY dinner - followed by an early night after a long day… First thoughts of Naousa are that it is such a beautiful place, with practically no English visitors and kind of reminds me of a combination of Calvi (in Corsica) and St Tropez.

Slept so well and woke to blue skies and sunshine, which meant the fact that we had to sleep under duvet due to the air con being so cold slightly odd. After a quick breakfast of apple and water (prisoners rations surely more than the breakfast of two sisters on holiday?!), we set out exploring around Naousa - which given it is a rather small fishing village didn’t take too long. After yesterday’s meandering down paths past houses to find the harbor, we realized that there is a much quicker route involving steps down to the ‘main’ road below and not having to negotiate such steep roads! We walked around the harbor, saw fishermen cutting up octopus and hanging their catch along wooden poles by their boat to dry them out in the sunshine - as well as mackerel which had been sliced ‘butterfly style’ and opened up to sun-dry. Found a very quaint second harbor area, just behind the first, and whilst walking around heard fishermen in their boats shouting to each other! Stopped for a cappuccino freddo (cold, strong coffee) and ice tea in Amalie Café, which was chosen for the harbor facing position and comfy chairs - once postcards and holiday bracelets had been duly purchased, we headed back to our room for a respite from the very hot sunshine and some lunch…

An earlier ‘cake’ than yesterday was taken to the ‘K’ beach, which meant we arrived to plenty of spare sunbeds rather than the high and low search we had had to undertake the previous day. Mr Sunbed (the man who collected the €2.50 per bed) commented about us being from ‘Ireland’, as he thinks we’re from there even though I said ‘London’ yesterday! Thankful for the cool water, we both spent the rest of the afternoon running in and out of the sea to cool off. Already beginning to establish our little holiday routine, we caught the ‘cake’ back, showered, got ready for dinner and had our panachés on the balcony whilst watching people still on the beach below and the gorgeous sunset across the bay.

Dinner was spent at ‘Mediterrano’ restaurant, a lovely restaurant on the harbor where we had our first (and by no means last) Greek salad, sun-dried mackerel and grilled octopus - which is nice, but a large plate of it as a main course is a bit too much. Avoiding the stray cats that seem to be everywhere, but only come out once the sun has set, we headed back to Amalie Café (again) for coffee and baileys, which took an age to order and then arrive as everyone was distracted by Ajax vs Paethinikas match. Greeks clearly love their football. Home to bed via water purchase from our local shop, where Katerina (the lady who owns/runs Katerina Studios where we are staying) was sat outside chatting to the shop owner. Random, but very cute!

The next day we spent the morning exploring the backstreets of Naousa, off the ‘central square’, and found cute shops, an amazing bakery and a little church smelling of incense with lots of gold gilt religious pictures and candles. Lunch was on our balcony and then a repeat of the ‘K’ beach afternoon ritual - getting our ‘cake’, sunbathing and cooling off in the water. The day’s beach highlight was Chloe seeing a crab and finally finding the nearby taverna (typical on your last day) where ice cream and diet coke was duly purchased. Returned from the beach to evening drinks - of panaché - on our balcony and then off to La Pizerria for dinner, a restaurant spotted earlier off the central square. Slight problem of having eyes far bigger than our stomach resurfaced and so we ate far too much, albeit very tasty food - feta cheese bruschetta, chicken rolls and then attempted to eat a pizza each, oops! Feeling rather gluttonous we walked around the area by the square after dinner, but had to admit defeat and retreat to our room to lie down. The lesson of the day has to be always share starters!

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