The best way to start the day: Paros, Greece
“I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery — air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, ‘This is what it is to be happy.’” – Sylvia Plath
It doesn’t take much for me to be happy. It doesn’t require a flight across the world (although that does make me very happy indeed) or a posh restaurant (again, bliss); sometimes it’s as simple as a long walk, in the early hours of the morning, and a swim in the sea.
Yesterday we woke before dawn and walked through the town of Parikia, along the two bays and followed the dirt track to the Greek Orthodox church at Agios Fokas. We set off at 6.15am, not long before sunrise. We felt a bit smug and a little nostalgic as we passed by the last of the party set drinking ouzo at the beach bars.
As we walked, we watched locals bob about in the water, getting their morning exercise in before the tourists took over and laughed at the work of proprietary planners who had already put their towels out on their sunbeds! We picked our way along narrow goat tracks on the sides of the hills above the crystal clear water. We watched the first boats and ferries of the day start their work. We nodded knowingly to the 3 other early birds out running or walking that we met along the way…yeah, this is the best, we know the secret.
We picked up a Frappe (cold coffee, ice and milk) and a cheese pastry to share on the way back through town at the bakery across from the marina, surrounded by Greek fishermen having their morning chats over coffee and cigarettes. As we walked back along the beach road, the bells rang out to summon the good people of Paros to church. Very insistently! The last of the morning revelers, still going at 8.45am, ignored the tolling of the bells, choosing instead to belt out The House of Rising Sun in the way that is only possible after an all-nighter that is still going long after the world has started its regular day.
The dust was washed off with a swim in the sea just outside our apartment where we met a lovely Czech woman; a labour lawyer for the EU, who spoke 8 languages and commuted from Prague to Brussels each week. Three lawyers (well, one very impressive current one and two lapsed ones), bobbing around in the Aegean Sea, all feeling ‘this is what it is to be happy’.
