Muse to Poets, Painters, the Yacht-set and Stars Arriving by ship from Athens, Hydra is a rocky world away, suddenly revealed from behind its guardian cliffs – a picturesque harbour-front town rising theatrically out of the sea. To the right and left are imposing mansions built on 19th century shipping fortunes, behind them, like a … Read More
The Isle Of The Blest Samos, the birthplace of Hera, was famous for its wine, its women and its ships – Byron called for his bowl of Samian wine to be filled high even in the 19th century. The countryside is green, fertile, gentle, with two great mountain masses and a coastline with many sandy … Read More
Lava, Lovers and the Lost City of Atlantis Santorini takes your breath away the first time you see it, especially if you arrive by boat and look up at the sheer rusty cliff soaring above you, with its frosting of villages lining the top. Hard to see how you will ever dock at the tiny … Read More
When You Set Out On Your Journey To Ithaca… Cavafy’s poem is a haunting icon for all our odysseys. Do look it up! Ithacans themselves have been adventurers and wanderers, journeying to other sides of the world to build new lives since the time of Homer’s hero Odysseus. The island is dramatically beautiful, rugged, relatively … Read More
Two Names, Two Natures One side is chic coastal villas and the yachtie heaven of Vourkari, with its lively resort feel, on the other side are the gentle and arcadian uplands of farmers cultivating the rich and fertile terracings of far-flung country settlements. Kea feels very different from the other Cyclades: it lacks the photogenic … Read More
Greece’s Wild West – “Where Burning Sappho Leaped and Sung…” Byron’s wonderful Ode to the Isles of Greece picks out the extreme westernmost point of the island, where the range of white cliffs dropping down to turquoise water and white sands comes to an end. The end of the cliffs, from which the ancient poetess … Read More
Queen Of The Islands – natural elegance with high-octane glamour and style Dazzlingly white and windswept, waterless and treeless, but with superb thick sandy beaches, blue-domed chapels and churches, dovecotes and windmills and a sparkling streamlined natural architecture, the most beautiful small harbour/port in these islands, Mykonos epitomizes an ideal Greek island. But it is … Read More
Dionysos’ Island Having slayed the Minotaur in Knossos, Theseus the son of the king of Athens, abandoned Ariadne, his young Cretan bride here after she helped him escape from King Minas’s wrath – as Dana Facaros wrote: “This was, even in the eyes of Athenians, dishonest.” Mary Renault found a neat explanation to save her … Read More
The Siren Of The Islands We, like so many, are helplessly and hopelessly in love with Amorgos, the most easterly of the Cycladic Islands, so this is going to be a highly-biased description. Lorelei lives and sings and combs her hair from this mystical rock in the middle of the Aegean… Remote, magical, imbued with … Read More
Kefalonia is one of Greece’s largest islands and, having largely escaped the Turkish occupation, has a proud consciousness of its identity as one of the earliest outposts of modern Greek civilisation under the Venetian and later British Empires. Variously known as Kefalonia and Kefallinia, the inhabitants are widely (and fondly) regarded by the rest of … Read More
The Island With The Spilt Personality The essence of life in the Aegean is the delicate dance between extremes – East and West, Ottoman and Venetian, the sea and the land. Nowhere is this better illustrated than on Andros. The island is rich in running waters – thus green, lush, fertile, but with great barren … Read More
