Page 36 - Travel Leisure - USA (February 2020)

Athens
Crete
our skin. While the clay dries, before we rinse it
off, she says, “On Páros, nature is a spa.” We make
one more stop, at Kolympithres, named for its
picturesque, eroded rock formations that resemble
surreal baptismal fonts.
A pair of similar boulders slink stylishly,
half- submerged, in the swimming pool at
Kalia’s hotel, Parilio (parilio hotel paros; doubles
from $275). “We wanted to bring a touch of
Kolympithres here,” she explains. Throughout
the property, she and her husband, Antonis
Naoussa, a fishing Eliopoulos, took care to incorporate such local
village on the
northern coast design elements. (On Santorini, the couple own
of Páros. and run several celebrated hotels, including
32 T R AV E L + L E I S U R E | F E B R U A R Y 2 0 2 0
Mystique and Vedema, part of Marriott’s Luxury
Collection; Parilio, their first project on Páros,
opened last summer.)
Clustered like the whitewashed buildings of a
Cycladic village, Parilio’s structures gently
descend from terrace to terrace. Each of the
hotel’s 33 suites has its own patio, and three
infinity-edged reflecting pools keep the sound of
falling water always faintly in the air. “For me, the
strongest piece of Páros is the sun,” the hotel’s
Athens-based designer, Stamos Hondrodimos,
tells me. “You feel like the white color of the
buildings is going to make you blind.” Calm
interiors give shelter from the brightness.
Bedding, upholstery, and tile floors in earth tones
set off the glass-fronted dark-wood dressers.
Parilio draws from the island’s church
architecture, too. Guests pass through arches
inspired by Páros monasteries on their way to
meals, each of which could be a holy feast.
Breakfast at the restaurant, Mr. E., is a sublime
spread: cheeses made on the island, sweet
tsoureki bread with mastic and anise, scrambled
eggs with fresh tomato and oregano, and Kalia’s
favorite coffee, the traditional frapé that Greeks
drank before espresso conquered the world.
The dinner menu reinvents Greek classics—
rich moussaka croquettes, bream baked in lemon
leaves with a Párian chickpea stew. Fortified, Kalia
and I and a half dozen of her friends pile into cars
for the 10-minute drive to old-town Naoussa, a
maze of shops, cafés, and bars that sprouts from
two squares along the water.
As we enter the bustling square called Little
Venice, the lights go dark. Everyone takes a
breath—for a quiet instant, you can hear the sky-
blue-and-white Greek flag whip in the midnight
wind—and then, all at once, the crowd cheers. In
the blackout, nightclubs crank up generators,
dance music bounces through open doors and
windows, and Mario Tsachpinis, the ebullient
owner of Mario Restaurant (mario restaurant paros;
entrées $15–$31), shows us to a table in the square.
“Yamas!” he cries—a drinking cheer—and from
a glass flask he pours the first of many rounds of
souma, a clear, lilting spirit distilled from fermented
grapes. Small talk is as strange as dreams. “I run a
shipping company,” says a man in flowing gray
linen. “My luggage is on Santorini, but I think I
will go to Mykonos tomorrow, and I have meetings ILLUSTRATION BY MAY PARSEY
in Munich the day after that. What will I do?”
wonders a woman in a leopard print. Tsachpinis,
pouring, grinning, responds, “Yamas!”