We love to travel in either May or September, wherever we are going. There are fewer crowds of visitors, the weather is usually ideal, either the flowers are blooming or the harvest is being brought in.

We love Greece in September. We have heard that Paros is busy in July and August, with crowds of Greeks having their vacations on the island. Right now we are often the only visitors around. In “our neighborhood,” of course, we seem to be just about  the only foreigners around, except for the house sitter who has lived here two years and teaches yoga at a lovely place called Tao’s.

I took a yoga class at Tao’s and was blown away by the location and the building. Have you ever taken yoga in a room with wall-to-wall tatami mats, windows open to the Parian breeze and sumi-e scrolls on the walls? Truly elegant and restful!

One of the magnificent things about Paros is its marble. Parian marble was used for the Venus de Milo and the roof of the Parthenon, to name a few famous examples. It’s easy to see why. It has a soft, almost flesh-colored tone. It looks as if you could touch it and it would respond like skin. Obviously the Italian sculptors knew a good thing. But how did they get all that marble from Paros to Italy? Yikes! Amazing!

We went to the beach this morning; it being Sunday, we thought it might be busier, but not before noon. We had the entire Golden Beach nearly to ourselves. I picked up some lovely pieces of Parian marble right out of the sand of the beach. The quarries are still active; it seems the marble is still there to be employed by sculptors.

Marble from Paros was used for the roof of the Parthenon.