Visit the Greek Islands… I’ve definitely done this, but it wasn’t the experience I was thinking of when I added it to The List. In my head, I imagined wandering along little cobblestone alleyways amongst a sea of white, gleaming buildings with cute little blue domes and arches over every doorway. I thought I’d be eating loads of olives, and enjoying epic vistas.
And while there was epic views, and I did eat a few olives (often accompanied by a stupid amount of feta), it’s not like what I thought. Perhaps that’s what you get, when you’re in more touristy spot like Fira, on Santorini.
While I’d love to see Santorini, I haven’t yet. But what I did see was just as gorgeous, I’m sure. I sailed around the Dodecanese Islands, a group of 160ish small little islands in the Aegean Sea (26 of them are inhabited, which was handy). While I know Patmos was gorgeous from the top (oh, the views were breathtaking!), mostly sailing around these little islands, they all looked very brown and dusty. They didn’t have an awful lot of sandy beaches (though we did mange to find some to bbq on), and generally only the inhabited islands had any kind of lush greenery.
Still, every time we sailed into a marina, the ‘greek island’ feel took over. My favourites were the little little tiny places, practically little fishing villages, like in Vathys, or Leros. Places that were extraordinarily cute, with gorgeous views, and cute little boats lined up in the marina, and fun on-the-beach restaurants. The people were fun, always happy to help. Some of the locals I met were always so pleased when I tried to use what little Greek I knew.
Still, I went, and it was brilliant. Our route:
A ridiculous amount of fun. The islands looked like this:
So yes. Lovely, no? There’s another Greece post coming where I talk about what we did, and there are photos that have people in them. But for this, Visit the Greek Islands, I think I can say Number 16 is done! Woo!
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