So work brought me to Paris & Berlin. . .: Island life

The majority of our time in Greece was spent in the islands - well, two of them. First up was Ios - the party island! I have to say that, yes the average age was probably 20, but despite this, it is very calm. Or at least where we were staying. There were no clubs so the kids would leave in the evening and then wouldn't show up at the beach until late afternoon so it was perfect for us "old" people. This was the view coming in on the ferry:

While our hotel room was nothing spectacular - it was cheap, its outside was worth it and its location was awesome!

Drinks on the terrace

We didn't do much other than hang on the beach , cocktail hour around 5pm and then dinner in the evening - this schedule was fine by me! I was still recovering from Mexico and needed a vacation from my previous vacation!

View from lunch each day

And then we were on our way to island number two . . .

Next island - Naxos! We had spent a few hours in Naxos on our way to Ios. We took a very little plane to save some time. We arrived at a very little airport -

Yep, one belt and you had to pull the bags along :)

We spent the afternoon touring the city before hoping on the boat to Ios so while this seems backwards I thought it made more sense to put all the Naxos pics together. The town had a castle so we thought, cool - that'll kill some time and we are castle people. This is the castle:

View from the castle

View from the castle

I think it took all of 5 minutes to tour it (and that included reading the story boards). It offered some nice views so that was nice. We spent time also on the day we left wandering the tiny streets which are more the style you think of when you hear Greece.

Our hotel in Naxos was much nice but not in as good location. It was a 5 minute walk to the beach (10 to the better, bigger one) but the family who owned it were lovely and there were farm animals. At one point there was a whole situation with the sheep, the chicken and the cows. The sheep were very suspicious of us . . .

The terrace

A better view

And the suspicious sheep

Naxos is a family oriented place so it had way more people who showed up at the beach early in the day but in my opinion the water was nicer. Ios had an undertow so you were thrown around a lot; this was not the case here.