Medellin had two primary locations for lights this year – Parque Norte and Parque del Rio. The latter turned out to be a bit of a disappointment, covering a smaller area and mostly feeling like last year’s displays reused, so we returned to Parque Norte. The theme was ‘Family Values’, which was generally interpreted as a farming lifestyle.

We loved the animals and the wood chopping, but I wondered how the ‘Chiva’ party bus fit the theme. Sandra explained that these buses were originally designed as transports for people to and from market, with access on both sides for every row of seating. They were only recently turned into party buses for the tourist industry.

Last year, the lake was full of lilies, which were beautiful, the greater diversity this year, which included fishing boats and ducks, was more interesting. Unfortunately, the higher contrast of the water made for more difficult photography.

We still plan to visit the growing displays in Envigado and Sabaneta, but we’re running out of time.

I’ve never much liked birthdays, but I enjoy spending time with Sandra any weekend. She always steps it up a bit for the first weekend in November, though. This year, she took me to an escape room with a medieval / dragon theme in Envigado.

For those who don’t know, an escape room is a series of puzzles, usually along a theme, leading eventually to a key to unlock the entry door. They’re designed for 2-6 people, but it’s usually easier with more eyes / hands / minds to work through multiple puzzles concurrently.

With only two of us, especially since it was Sandra’s first, I didn’t have high expectations of success and was happy to just enjoy the game. It took her a while to get into the mindset for understanding and solving the various puzzles, and we both got sidetracked a number of times, but we actually escaped with minutes to spare and only a few clues from the staff, who observed remotely.

She also took me to a Japanese restaurant since I’d been wanting for her to try ramen. Although mine wasn’t like anything I’d tasted in Japan, it was close enough and Sandra’s looked pretty authentic. The walls were all decorated with pictures of anime characters, Boy’s Day carp kites flew from the balcony and a 7-tier Girl’s Day doll display was on show in a back room. All in all, a great weekend, and we’ll be going back to both the restaurant and the escape room.

Paros was a blessing after Santorini. A few hundred tourists got off the ferry with us, but the island was bigger than any we’d been to, so it absorbed us all more easily. The locals were more relaxed (not as exhausted) and our hotel was right on the beach.

We were welcomed by a beautiful sunset lighting up a windmill, and enjoyed a calm walk along the beach to reach our hotel, checking all the menus along the way, choosing where we’d eat for the next few nights.

We spent the first day discovering the picturesque town of Lefkes in the hills in the centre of the island, and chatting with one of the shopkeepers who had moved their from the mainland. He was on a mission to save the cats, which were everywhere, from being poisoned by a vicious local. It had been going on for a couple of years, and he had photos of all the cats that had been killed, and only that morning had added another and was trying to get the owner to put a statement in to the police. We have noticed a lack of dogs on the entire trip, but there are cats everywhere. Apparently they suffer out of the tourist season because many of them are strays and only get fed by tourists.

Our day was so enjoyable that we decided to extend our time on Paros to four nights at the expense of a shorter stay in Athens. We spent the rest of the time cycling to Naussa, lazing on the beach and wandering the streets of Parikia, the main port, and it was sad to leave the island on our final day.

Sandra wanted to see Santorini because it’s the island that everyone talks about. A quick look online found a page that said if you were going to spend 10 days in the Greek Islands, you should spend half of them on Santorini because of the views, the wine, the volcano etc. We thought that two nights would be enough, but it turned out we were wrong.

Half an hour after arriving, we were in a traffic jam on the switchback climb from the port to the rest of the island. We had been confronted by a rude bus driver and had seen suspicious looking guys checking out all the tourists’ bags left unattended in the bus’s storage. We looked at each other and said, ‘I think one night will do.’

Our decision wasn’t changed by the prices of the hotels or by being accosted by someone outside every restaurant on the way down the street. We were happy to book tickets out the next day and to eat at a small, unassuming restaurant with fantastic food a little further from the tourist area. Even here, the owner treated the staff poorly despite them being very capable.

The main redeeming experience of our night on Santorini was the open air cinema. Unlike the grand stand on Sydney Harbour or the sprawling picnic in Centennial Park, this was a more intimate environment inside a walled garden. We highly recommend seeing The Joker, and if you have to go to Santorini, take some time out at the cinema.

There was no direct ferry to Santorini, so we changed at Naxos. It was clearly more popular with tourists than Amorgos, but so late in the season, we could wander the streets of Naxos in relative peace. Our first stop was the archeology museum, which had a collection of pieces dug up from various islands. We were particularly taken with a small stone carved on both sides, one inscribed with hieroglyphics and the other with tiny figures, which looked to have Egyptian influence.

We enjoyed getting lost in the winding streets, eventually finding our way to Apollo’s gate via the only statue carving we ever saw of a naked female figure. While the men were regularly naked, the women were almost always covered up. Unfortunately, we never discovered the reason for this, though a search on the internet suggested that the naked male was considered heroic, and that there were plenty of naked female statues from the same era.

Apollo’s gate is simple, but impressive in its size and for the fact that it’s still upright despite a lack of any visible structural support. Apparently it was to be the door to a temple, but the temple was never completed.