I Spent 2 Weeks on Paros for a Friend's Wedding — and It Was the Best Vacation I've Ever Taken

On a blowout trip to the Greek island of Paros with friends, one travel writer found the kind of joy that poets write about.

We land by prop plane on the Greek island of Páros, almost exactly two years late.

The plan had been to celebrate a friend’s 60th birthday — but as we know, most plans in 2020 went awry. Time passed, Doug turned 60, then 61, and during those years spent in his New York apartment, love bloomed, and birthday plans gave way to wedding plans. And so we were all reinvited, two years later, to celebrate his marriage.

I understood very well. I spent those lockdown years in Milan, and love bloomed there, too, so I am bringing Enrico, my Italian boyfriend, who taught me how to cook Italian. I know very few of the invited guests; Enrico, none. It is to be a week in a glass house above the Aegean. “A murder mystery,” I wrote to Doug when I accepted his invitation. Part of a long history of stories about characters trapped in a secluded place, like in Clue or an Agatha Christie novel or, I will later realize when I see the movie, Glass Onion. Doug asked who would be murdered. I wrote back: “Guessing is the fun part.”

At the airport, Enrico and I are met by Thanos, a wiry, tanned man with wild white hair. He and his brother run a car-rental business together. “It’s windy on Páros,” he warns us, just as we feel a burst of the strong Meltemi breezes that have touched these islands since antiquity.

Páros has been famous since the sixth century B.C. for its flawless marble — Parian marble, it’s called — used to make the Venus de Milo and the Winged Victory of Samothrace. It is an island of beaches, mountains, and windswept rocky cliffs, scattered with broken pillars, sarcophagi, mosaics — evidence that the place was passed from the Greeks to the Romans, from the Byzantines to the Venetians, and from the Ottomans, at last, to independent Greece. Round-shaped Páros: an island worn smooth from so many hands.

But it is also the birthplace of the truculent, bawdy warrior-poet Archilochus, of fox and hedgehog fame. “Leaving it was hell,” Archilochus wrote of a shield abandoned in battle, “but in a tricky spot / I kept my hide. Good shields can be bought.” A practical poet.

It is an island of beaches, mountains, and windswept rocky cliffs.

I navigate the winding road where we witness, across from a pizza shop, a stark-naked woman hanging up her clothes to dry. A practical laundress. We drive northeast, across a little isthmus, to the very end of the Santa Maria peninsula and down a long dirt road. How startling the first drive is in an unknown place. The wrong things stick out — the naked woman, the pizza parlor — while subtler details are invisible: old women on balconies drinking Coke and watching passersby, puppies yelping from garages, a fisherman shaking out a cigarette from a pack. Only later do we realize they were there all along. Enrico searches the radio for any song he recognizes. Then we are at the glass house, where Doug and Michael, two men of differing heights joined in matrimony, are waving away in delight.

We head to the hamlet of Naousa once all the suspects are assembled — the real estate baroness, the theater director, the doctor, the radio star, the art collector, the professional declutterer, and so on — each arriving separately by plane or ferry from the mainland. All Americans except Enrico, and look at us, in our linen and sandals, ballooning pants and billowing caftans that hibernated for two years before being brought out into the sun.

“Who’s going to be murdered?” I ask the radio star, and in her cunning way she points at Enrico. “The foreigner,” she whispers, winking. Enrico looks over, none the wiser. Who would murder someone with a smile like that? We arrive at the seaside village, a white stone labyrinth where the Minotaur is merely the setting sun, hiding behind one building or another until it leaps out at us above the thrashing waves at Fotis, a bar where a table is already reserved along a half-moon bay. White houses and boats cluster before the sun’s garish tangerine display, which is reflected in stripes along the water.

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You can plan your travel around sights, or you can plan around food. It is almost impossible to do both. Doug and Michael have unashamedly chosen food. Dinner tonight is at the famous Mario, where tables are crowded beside one another and waiters dip in and out like bees in thyme. A plate of starters, the waiter suggests: tzatziki, choriatiki, melitzanosalata, favas. Horta, wild greens. Then a fish in a salt crust, no? Doug gestures to me and we go inside, to where Mario himself is waiting. He shows us an ancient-looking marble vessel, filled with fish and ice. “A big one, I think!” Mario says, and I merely point. Who can name a fish in a foreign place? We begin our feast, and later, out comes the fish, its salt crust set aflame.

I look over at Enrico; he is wearing the grin he wears in English-language situations and a bright-yellow linen shirt we found in a secondhand shop in Milan. His eyes meet mine and widen as if to say: What? Two years trapped together in an apartment with a timid dog, another English-only situation.

Ouzo is poured. “Ya mas!” everybody shouts. Cheers!

In the morning, our first casualty: the radio star. She has a mild but detectable case of COVID, and so the rooms are rearranged and she is left on a balcony waving as we depart for Monastiri Beach. Not all of us — Enrico has found a “wild” beach, as he calls it, without chairs or a button to push for cocktails, and he is headed there on foot. The rest of us drive to rocky Monastiri, where we find sun beds and pineapple and wine.

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A bold crew sets out on a long hike along a barren rocky outcropping, decorated by those little purple flowers that seem to sadden flower arrangements back home. Here, they look miraculous. The rocks are pitted from the wind and sea, hardly rocks anymore. We come across a lighthouse. I should have heeded Thanos’s advice, because suddenly the wind changes direction and I am too late to save my hat. I watch as it elopes across the rocks to a separate destiny. I return unscathed and unworried. Good shields can be bought.

Enrico is poolside when we return, brown from the sun and writing away in his notebook (his book is nearing deadline). Across from him at the pool, a tiny white-masked bird dips bread into the water. A practical bird.

Afternoon is spent in Lefkes, a stunning town with a mountain setting that has left it untouched by development. Here are the steep, mortared-stone paths of Greece that one dreams about, without the crowds of Naousa. Pottery and bags, shawls and leather, restaurants offering precisely the food Americans won’t eat: octopus, rabbit, and snails. A local potter is so handsome he makes our group’s collective heart leap. In one piazza, a sign points to the Byzantine Road, laid a thousand years ago and leading down to the port of Piso Livadi.

No time for that today; we are expected farther along the coast, in Ampelas, where the sun is sitting on the horizon. It seems to hover there: a dinner guest impatiently awaiting our arrival. Here the tables are set up along a seawall, and, after the sun finally sets, its understudy arrives: the moon. More of the same starters, just as delicious. Some of the local smoked mackerel, an octopus for the willful Italian, and another fish set aflame.

The Broadway director turns to me and asks where I’m from, and we discover we grew up two suburban blocks from one another. “Rockville, Maryland!” he shouts. “Farmland Elementary!” We remember Mrs. Yee, the second-grade teacher. The public swimming pool, the terrifying darkness of Tilden Park. “We have to talk more about all this,” he says as we’re getting into our cars.

But of course we don’t; he is the second casualty, called back to New York for a casting crisis. The doctor, his husband, leaves with him. I imagine we are being picked off one by one. “It isn’t Clue!” I tell Doug. “It’s And Then There Were None!” He seems unworried. The director is already gone when I awaken to watch the sun rise behind a rock out in the sea — Elephant Rock, it’s called. Imagine an ancient Greek fisherman naming something after an elephant! Everywhere, the circling birds of morning.

"Dinner tonight is at the famous Mario, where tables are crowded beside one another and waiters dip in and out like bees in thyme. A plate of starters, the waiter suggests: tzatziki, choriatiki, melitzanosalata, favas. Horta, wild greens. Then a fish in a salt crust."

Lunch is on Antiparos, the small sister island to Páros, after which we plan to board a boat. Enrico begs off again for his “wild” beach. “I’m anti-Antiparos,” he explains. The radio star, from her balcony, shouts that we could pull her behind us in a little dinghy. But alas, she is still too sick to leave her room.

A car ferry takes us across the water, and we drive to a resort called the Rooster. Small stone cabins with individual pools, a restaurant where we are seated at a table with a lemon tree growing through its center. Ridiculously, I wonder if I could pull this off at home. The real estate baroness returns from the gift shop, wearing a bolero made of golden rope, as if her thin, tanned arms were encaged like saplings. “Do you think I can pull this off at home?”

Back on Páros we board the rented boat. I am not made for boating, as I am not made for most activities conducted in broad daylight. I anoint myself with sunblock and cover myself head to toe in linen. The Minotaur won’t catch me. We are taken by unstable dinghy to a grand wooden boat, where the captain gives us permission to come aboard. I sit in the shade, wondering what I will say to my dermatologist. Around the islands we go, past blue lagoons and arches sea-carved from the rock. On our way back, I see a boat similar to ours trailing a giant inflatable banana, on which a young woman tans herself. We could have taken the radio star after all — if she were willing to sit in an inflatable banana.

The captain takes us back to Páros, to Dionisos Beach, his secret swimming spot, and here is a surprise: it is Enrico’s “wild beach.” I see him with his notebook on the shore, surely irritated by the approaching boat of strangers. The captain informs us it is a nude beach — we can see some impressively tanned people in chairs — so I promptly shed my suit and swim toward Enrico. We are both surprised: he that I’ve appeared out of nowhere, and me that everyone else in our party has kept their suit on. Including wild Enrico. I am a naked middle-aged American on a beach; I recognize a recurring nightmare. Enrico laughs.

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The professional declutterer, wanting me to feel at ease, promptly removes her top. “I grew up with hippies,” she explains. Enrico offers some fruit he brought, water, a sandwich. We lie in the sand and the waves come and go at our feet. Another poem, by the American James Schuyler: “Quiet ecstasy and sweet content, why are not all days like you?”

The six of us eat at a small joint in Naousa. Enrico comments that the food is a cycle of dips and salads and fish set aflame. “In Italy we would not eat the same thing every day!” he says in wonder. The power goes out just as we have paid. We find our way back through streets lit by candles and fishes set aflame.

Perhaps Italy knows many things, but Greece only one. A good one.

“Say goodbye to the island Páros,” Archilochus wrote. “Farewell to its figs and the seafaring life.”

A private plane takes the art collector home; it is our last day, after all, and he has chosen an early departure. To compensate, the radio star has tested negative and joins us grandly for breakfast, her white linen floating around her. It has become clear to me that, with her airtight alibi, she could be the murderer. She gives her regal, squinting smile and tells us we should stay overnight in Athens; she is going to a friend’s concert and we could all have dinner. Enrico and I demur; our plans are strict.

But in fact, the radio star’s suggestions will come to pass. Our flight will be delayed, and we will overnight in Athens and see the musician Laurie Anderson perform in the Acropolis and Enrico will sit beside her at dinner and giggle over people they somehow know in common. Above, the Parthenon will glow against the deep blue night. I will sit astounded by good luck, and beauty, by the surprising happiness of middle age.

But before that, one by one, we depart for ferries or planes. The declutterer squeezes my hand in solidarity; we have braved nakedness together. Doug and Michael stand like good parents as they wave goodbye, definitely a married couple as one leans to the other with a logistical question. Then they also say their goodbyes; only Enrico and I are left. We drive to the one place we have not seen in Páros: the southern tip. Branching roads take us below the mountains until we arrive at a small seaside town, where locals are having coffee before the bobbing boats. Piso Livadi: precisely the town we could see from Lefkes, the end of the Byzantine Road.

We take a table by the water and order coffee. As if on cue, a coffeepot-shaped cloud passes overhead. Quiet ecstasy and sweet content. Enrico smiles and brings out his book. Ah, I think, the murderer. My lover just wanting us to be alone.

“Here I lie...” Archilochus wrote, “struck through the bones with love.”

Páros Unpacked

Where to Stay

Cosme Paros: This 40-suite Luxury Collection hotel in Naousa, which opened in 2022, was designed to resemble a traditional Greek village.

The Rooster: A secluded resort on neighboring Antiparos with 16 villas, a restaurant, and a spa.

The Thinking Traveller: Founded in 2002, this Athens-based firm specializes in luxury villa rentals on Páros and other Greek islands — including modern properties like the glass house in this story.

Where to Eat

Christiana: Find stuffed squid, fried zucchini, and other Greek standbys at this tavern in Ampelas.

Fotis All Day Bar: This white-walled retreat in Naousa is famous for its hearty brunch.

Mario by the Sea: Choose your own fish at this institution in the town of Livadia.

Siparos Seaside Restaurant: Modern takes on Greek classics, such as orzo with shrimp in saffron sauce, near Xifara Beach.

Where to Shop

Petra Farm: Pick up olive oil, capers, jams, and spices at this family-run farm near Kolimpithres Beach.

Yannis Sergakis: A Naousa boutique with simple, elegant jewelry that captures the spirit of summer on the islands.

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