Greek Island-Hopping 1

Me and Mr. Durrell

House and plant in a small alley

Tiny alleys

View from the Hils

Kea's inner beach at the port

I was attracted to the idea of island-hopping last summer for the first time. I traveled to Crete with a very literary friend on a whim, and he introduced me to the delightful world of Lawrence Durrell's literary writing. Most people are probably familiar with Durrell's work through his
Alexandria Quartet, a set of four novels set in Alexandria, Egypt, dealing with events during and after the 2nd WW in the city. The India-born British expat excelled in travel-writing too however. As an employee of the foreign service, he was posted in various locations during the war, but since he was an eager traveller too, wrote gems of books about his favorite places on earth, Corfu, Cyprus and Provence being among them. His  masterpiece in that genre in my opinion is "The Greek Islands" though. Durrell revisits 60+ Greek Islands in this wonderful little book in his imagination and his notes in the 70's, talking about their geography, history, character and culture in a lush, clever, tasty tone.

The horrible port of Lavrio, the ferry taking me to Kea

There are more than 6000 Greek Islands. Even the Greeks themselves don't exactly know how many. Even though some are just uninhabited little rocks, you can run into a book called "777 Best Greek Islands" at the Athens airport, just to give you an idea how many of them there are to discover.
My Greek-island trip of summer 2012 consisted of only one hop unfortunately, from Crete to Santorini. I had just discovered Durrell's book and hadn't made the necessarry arrangements to join my friend in hopping any further. My one sad hop to Santorini also had to be a day trip because I had to catch a flight the next day. But I woved to come back and hop more whenever the opportunity presented itself.
So it happened that a friend of mine, an archeologist, won a fellowship to do some research on Minoan ceramics in the Cyclades for this fall. The Cyclades is a group of islands in the Aegean sea, southeast of mainland Greece. I jumped at the opportunity, and armed with my beloved Durrell book, flew to Athens one warm September morning. The itineary of hopping consisted of 6 islands in 12 days, a rather ambitious one it turned out, mostly designed in accordance with the museum permits of  my friend. We were to visit Kea-Syros-Paros-Naxos-Santorini and Crete, the last two thrown in because of the Prehistoric Minoan settlement Akrothiri in Santorini and the Minoan Palaces Knossos and Mallia near Iraklion in Crete my friend was eager to visit. Even though I am not an archeologist, I am very interested in history and archeology, so any trip with history/ archeology in it is immediately attractive to me.
The first island, Kea, is a little one, about 30 minutes with the ferry from the majorly unattractive port of Lavrio in Athens. This deserted port only seems to service to Kea and some cruise ships, is very hard to reach to with public transportation, involving a bus-change in the middle of nowhere and there is nothing except for a ticket booth and a few banks to sit while waiting. So, if you have to travel from this port, make sure not to arrive too early and bring some snacks, water and a good book to entertain yourself.
Durrell has only a few paragraphs on this island and rightly so. Even though it's cute and lovely, there is nothing much of interest except for the little port, the winding alleys of the chora (the town center, usually located on the hillside) and a couple taverns. My friend had arrived there earlier and had done almost all her work so I got to spend only one night in this tiny place. I had arranged all our reservations through booking.com, and we stayed and hotel Serie here, a nice hotel in the middle of the way from the port to the town center with a stunning balcony view and very nicely decorated rooms. We ate at Reynaldo's in my only night there, a typical Greek tavern with an incredibly hospitable host of a man, Reynaldo, who has specialties like spicy fish from his native Corfu and obviously a very careful and precise cook. The fava ( mashed chickpeas or fava beans) , steamed herbs, the grilled Greek cheese Saganaki and the tzatziki (yoghurt with cucumbers, garlic and mint) were among the best mezedes I've had throughout this trip. The small museum of Kea was closed during the only day I was there, and I don't see any reason to revisit except to eat at Reynaldo's again.  Oh, and the beaches are supposed to be lovely. But so are most beaches of Greek Islands.
Kea being and feeling like a first taste, an appetizer of Greek Island life, we sat sail for Syros, the administrative capital of all Cyclades the next evening. I mean, we took the ferry. Just, setting sail much more romantic and we did have a couple adventures worthy of Homeros' attention during our trip, so I didn't hesitate to use it.
To be continued...