Greek Islands

Greek Islands
14 years ago me and my husband  went to Kalymnos, a Greek island close to Turkey, for the first time. It was a package tour and the only time I had ever been to Greece before was when I went to Rhodes when I was 18 or so. That time I cannot say that I saw anything of the uniqueness that was Rhodes. It could have been Spain or Turkey or anywhere. We only saw bars, the beaches and discos. We were up all night and slept on the beach in a sun lounge all day.

Climbing is popular on Kalymnos

So when we arrived in Kalymnos I wasn
´t prepared. I wasn´t prepared of the beauty, the people, the food or anything.

We arrived in the evening with a flight from Gothenburg and landed on the neighbouring island Kos, because Kalymnos didn´t have an airport at that time. They have one now but is only for domestic flights. Since it was a package tour we were picked up by a bus ( or taxi I can´t remember) and transferred to the small harbour Mastihari. There we had to wait for a while before we went on a small ferry that would take us the one hour journey to Kalymnos.

We arrived late and I remembered that the harbour was busy with people everywhere even if it was late. A small bus picked us up and we went through Pothia, the capital of Kalymnos.

I was amazed that all people seem to be out. Cars were driving viciously through the narrow streets. People sat in the bars and restaurants and it didn´t seem that there were so many tourists.

Lasse slept the whole way and I was left to myself. I stared at the theater outside and enjoyed every minute of it. When we had gone a bit further it was quieter and we went through an alley. The tree trunks were painted white and we passed a cemetery and there were lights glimmering on nearly all the graves. It was breathtakingly beautiful.

Vathy, Kalymnos

It was the start of our quite many trips to the Greek Islands. I think we went 2-3 times a year from then on. In the beginning we went to Kalymnos and Leros. Then we went further to Lipsi, Patmos, Ikaria, Fourni, Samos, Tilos, Serifos, Sifnos, Symi, Karpathos, Nisyros, Lefkada, Kefallonia and Rhodes But we nearly always went independent after that.

Kefalonia

The last island we fell in love with was Crete. We had avoided Crete since we thought it was spoiled with mass tourism. But Crete blew our minds totally. If you only avoided certain areas it was marvellous.

Now when we have bought a vineyard in Portugal it feels like we have abandoned  Greece. It will be hard to go there for us in the future. Greek islands will always have a piece of my heart.