Parikia, the capital of Paros, is a cozy town with pavement restaurants, cafes, shops and ticket offices lined up along the street towards the harbour. Inside the city, there is a labyrinth of narrow streets with small tourist shops offering their wares – sunglasses, bags, straw hats, caps, fashion clothes, jewelery and souvenirs. The residential buildings in neoclassical style are chalk white with doors and window frames in bright blue. Balconies hang over the street, and bougainvilleas defy the laws of nature and deliver a color show in a dry concrete landscape. Cats lie and laze in the shade. We walk on polished streets where the joints between each and every stone slab are hand-painted white. Outside a residential building we find a ring from an ancient temple pillar that serves as a table, and in another place we see a marble bench that is probably the foundation of an important building in ancient times, perhaps a shrine. Moving up the town, we come to the Frankish castle from 1260, built with the remains of a temple from the fifth century BC . in honor of the goddess Athena. A walk in Parikia is, as in many other Cycladic towns, a walk both in the past and the present. Greece at its best, in other words.
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