Idyllic islands fulfil dreams
It’s all white houses, blue seas and great Greek food
IS THERE a traveller who has not dreamt of spending time in the Greek Islands?
Weathered old blokes sipping retsina in rustic tavernas, endless beaches, clear seas, fishermen mending nets – it’s all there.
The most popular of the islands, of course, are the most expensive, but worth a brief visit if you have saved and budgeted. In Santorini (the biggie of them all) we managed a budget stay. The famous Santorini windmill featured on thousands of postcards and calendars had been converted to a few villas, ours was on the ground floor.
It was a fantasy come true to wake up each morning and look out over the Caldera, and it was the best spot on the islands to watch the lingering sunsets. Unfortunately, every tourist on the island thought so too and came to sit on our villa wall each night. At the time annoying, on reflection, a small downside.
Mykonos is eye-wateringly expensive but we found a small family-run place on a beach in a little bay that was so affordable we went back every summer for 15 years.
Naxos, Paxos, Samos, Paros – all just as delightful with the same rugged interiors and spectacular coastlines as the more expensive islands.
Our favourite budget islands are Lesbos, Sifnos and Karpathos, none of them known for their party vibe or attracting A-listers.
Unfortunately, Lesbos has become more known for its flood of refugees and all the heartbreak that comes with them. But checks now show the crisis has abated and visitors are slowly returning.
We spent a month on Lesbos, mostly in the port of Molyvos, a pretty harbour so quintessentially Greek it should be a postcard.
Every night we sat on our balcony watching the fishing boats come in, and one fisherman in particular who spent hours picking out flotsam from his nets, a cigarette dangling from his lips.
The tavernas all sat on the water’s edge with their octopus catch of the day drying on string in the sun. We ate more grilled octopus than anyone should. And spent very little.
On the island of Sifnos, our hotel owner thought we’d be more comfortable staying in his mother’s house on the hill (she was away) with sweeping views over the sea and island.
We spent an idyllic month in the house, paying a modest rent, eating yoghurt and honey for breakfast before walking down to the beach to swim out deep into warm water so clear we could look down to the sandy floor way below and see even the tiniest of movements.
At lunch we ate saganaki (melted cheese) in the tavernas with our feet in the sand, cats at our ankles.
At night we made our own Greek salads and sat up on the hill watching the giant ferries, lit up like Christmas trees, come in to spew out tourists who would walk from the ferry through the port town to disperse all over the island.
It was one of the cheapest and most memorable holidays we’d ever had.
Karpathos was even cheaper, although our accommodation in the capital, Pigadia, chosen by a friend we were travelling with, left a lot to be desired.
Our small room was dominated by a traditional Karpathonian bed, a soufa, where the entire family slept in gone days. The three of us had to climb a ladder to get up onto the soufa and then crawl over it like toddlers, two of us to sleep at one end, one at the other, our feet touching.
But it was ridiculously cheap and we ate some of the best food we’d encountered in all the islands: stuffed octopus, chargrilled lamb and a lot of feta.
Plan, research and budget and I reckon you’ll find a Greek Island holiday not so expensive.
June and September are good months to go, plenty of sunshine and fewer tourists.