I’m chasing the coat tails of the season in the Cyclades and escaping the biblical rain. This trip to the Greek Islands is replacing the three I cancelled during the pandemic. Am I ever going to set eyes on a white sugar cube house again or see an octopus strung up to dry? Such first world problems.
Avoiding Santorini
The last time I was in Santorini was 2011 when it was on the cusp of being the blowsy tart it’s now become. I was staying in Oia, beloved of young American girls escaping their sorority houses or honeymooning couples sitting smugly in hot tubs. Many tourists make the trip primarily to pose for Instagram sunsets on the edge of the caldera, their hashtag screaming #IAMHERE as they brace themselves against the meltemi winds. I’ve decided I’m going to use this showy beast as a jumping off point to exploring quieter, more unfamiliar islands and am staying one night only at Hotel Galini in Firostefani before catching the early boat to sleepy Folegandros, just a 50-minute ride away.
Despite the rampant tourism, my first night begins in authentic Greek style. I’m startled by the sound of shards of glass clattering down the steps to my room and realise I’m being serenaded by loud clapping and stomping from a raucous family celebrating in Café Galini just above me. I awake at 3.30 am and peek upstairs to see what Santorini looks like when everyone is finally asleep. It’s disappointingly dark and starless and I abandon the rest of the night as high winds mean my boat has been rescheduled for 8.35 am and I’m worried my alarm won’t penetrate my earplugs.
No one does hospitality like the Greeks and the receptionist – who must surely have end of season fatigue – has delivered a complimentary breakfast bag for me. I clutch it bleary eyed as I await my driver who will take me down the treacherous road that snakes down to the port. The buses here are in the Sicilian vein of being infrequent and eccentric and, as a non-driver, expect to have to ride around in overpriced, air-conditioned vans with blacked out windows. It’s all part of the Cycladic experience.
Normally I prefer the big ships from Piraeus where you can sunbathe on deck and watch the islands rise majestically around you, but options today are limited. The windows of my Seajets ferry look like the inside of a car wash and there are only safety demonstrations and euro trash fashionista TV rolling on the monitors. I train my eye on the horizon and am grateful it’s only a short haul. There’s a reason the symbol for the Cyclades is a windmill.
Avoiding Sleazebags in Folegandros
I will be in Chora for five nights, which is the main hub of Folegandros, a Cycladic village so perfect, it could be a film set. Overlooked by the church of Panagia, which is accessible by a zigzag stone path and a fifteen-minute climb, there’s a definite Mamma Mia feel and the sense that at any moment Pierce Brosnan might jump out at you and sing off key. Unlike Santorini, Folegandros hasn’t acquiesced to mass tourism, and has a winter population of 500, plus goats. Electricity and roads finally arrived in the late 1970s, and the local mayor is both progressive and a cat lover, ensuring that the many strays you find littered across Greece are not only castrated, but also well fed. So well-fed one of them even turns her nose up at the sardine head I drop on the floor at Araxe, a restaurant so welcoming I keep going back.
For a small island, Folegandros is full of characters. On my first afternoon, I encounter Andreas, a flamboyant blow in who runs a vintage shop an olive stone’s throw from Kallisti Hotel where I’m staying. He hard sells me a bracelet in a matter of moments, before informing me that he performs songs in French and English every night at 10 pm. Imagine a gay Athenian Marguerita Pracatan and you get the picture. He invites me to return later to ‘enjoy his energy’ but after less than four hours’ sleep, I barely have any of my own.
After a comfortable night, I’m ready to get up and at it. Sunday morning is always so atmospheric in Greece. I’m sitting in one of the five piazzas of Chora, listening to the slow intoning of the Orthodox priest and the peal of bells and watching the men flick their worry beads. Bang opposite me is a lothario scribbling a post card. He is as brown as a leather handbag and I wonder if the novel sitting beside him isn’t a well-thumbed copy of Lolita. His oily smile reveals his delight I am in his field of vision and frankly it is disturbing my feta omelette experience. I glower at him and move tables.
A couple of days later I am enroute to meet the Diapolous tour that sails around the island and provides five stop off points to jump into the Aegean, including the tamarisk lined Agios Nikolaos and remote Livadaki beaches. Folegandros has gravity defying cliffs that have historically kept out the pirates and the best, and sometimes only, way to access its coves is by sea. I find a café on the pretty harbour of Karavostasi and Sunday’s lothario has not only been on my bus but is now sitting several tables away. As someone in his late sixties, I am far too old for him when there is younger flesh available, and having complimented the waitress on the length of her dress, the conversation that follows goes like this:
Ageing Lothario (who’s French just to complete the Humbert Humbert vibe): ‘I’ve just filmed you serving my coffee’
Waitress: *nervous laugh*
Ageing Lothario: ‘Stand out there in the sunlight and let me take a photo of you’.
Waitress: *stunned silence*
Me (weighing in): ‘No, she will not pose for a photo. Her job is to serve the food, not titillate you’.
Ageing Lothario: *stunned silence*
Me: (silently) If he’s on my boat trip and that phone gets pointed at me, it’s going straight in the effing Aegean.
Ageing Lotherio: ‘Why not?’
Me: ‘Er? Because it’s creepy?’.
Ageing Lothario (incredulous): ‘But I’ve known the café owner here for more than twenty years!’
And just like that, another privileged white man receives the staggering news that he can’t do exactly what he likes without consequences. Five minutes later he shuffles up to the waitress and offers an embarrassed apology. A small victory for feminism, although the moment is diluted when another perma-tanned creep tries to hit on me whilst I’m eating my baguette. Aren’t middle-aged women supposed to be in invisible?
Avoiding Reality in Sifnos
I’m spending the last three nights of the holiday on glamorous Sifnos, just two hours away by boat and a very different terrain. Like a Grecian California, with more greenery on the mountains than the biblically beautiful Folegrandos, it’s known as a foodie island and Platis Yialos on its southern coast is where the best restaurants can be found. I’m staying at the glorious Miles Away Luxury Apartments which are twenty metres from the horseshoe beach with its views of neighbouring Paros. A favourite with Tom Hanks and other Hollywood stars, Platis Yialos is so ridiculously pleasurable, I decide I’m going to fully commit to being a beach bum and gourmand. All the restaurants are accessible from the sand and after dark the night really is a starry dome, so just take your shoes off and walk along the bay until you find something that appeals. For restaurant recommendations, I would pre-book the famous Omega 3 where they serve inventive seafood tapas and ceviche on long benches on the beach, and then chance your arm at Yallos and Maiolica where cuisine is also a serious business. Finish off your meal with mastika, the local earthy digestif and then think about where you’re pitching your sunbed tomorrow. Rinse and repeat.
Greece is one of the best places in Europe to be a solo female traveller. It doesn’t have to be Shirley Valentine (‘hiya rock’) avoiding Jeanette and Dougie from Manchester. The Cyclades are a combination of authentically local and defiantly cosmopolitan, and it’s never difficult to find someone (non-slimy) to have dinner with if you are in the mood for company. The lack of a language barrier is a real plus which is just as well because I really can’t grapple with that alphabet.
Any journey back from a remote Greek island, however, does tend to be epic. Not Odysseus epic, but enough to make you feel like you need a lie down the next day. If you’re flying out of Santorini, you will need to change boats at Milos, a moonscape island now overrun by Gen-Z clubbers. Unless you want to feel like an ancient hag, I wouldn’t advise a stopover longer than the time it takes to cross the harbour tarmac. Foolishly, I book the 11 pm flight from Thira with the Jet2.com crowd and arrive at Stansted at 4.30 am Greek time. I wave down my taxi driver in the howling rain and wondering what alternative universe I’ve just been dropped into. I have blonde hair and a tan. But oh my god. It’s autumn.