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Travel Story

The Greek Islands

After the Olympic Games the Aegean Islands offer a place to celebrate, a place to unwind, and a thousand places of untold beauty

From the very beginning the Greeks faced media reports doubting their ability to pull off the Summer Olympic Games. Ticket sales are down, the Athens power grid was strained beyond capacity by searing temperatures and now, only a week before the opening ceremonies, there is concern about possible strikes. If worrying was part of their temperament the Greeks might well be concerned. But optimism prevails and doubts, if there were any, were set aside when the underdog Greek soccer team marched past France, the Czech Republic, and Portugal to win the European Soccer championship. If that can happen then anything is possible.

As the Olympic torch nears its final destination the Greeks are inspired with a sense of great national pride and the confidence to make these Summer Games, the first since 9/11, a shining tribute to the Olympic tradition. And when the Games are over – when it's time to unwind and savour the memory – Athens is little more than a discus throw from one of the world's great holiday retreats.

The Greek Islands, scattered like jewels in the turquoise waters of the Aegean and Ionian Seas, are so different from Athens they could be half a world away. Yet any one of them can be reached in a matter of hours by boat and several have airports served by domestic flights from Athens. From the Port of Piraeus, only a 20 minute metro ride from central Athens, Europe's largest ferry network, provides service to the island of your choice, and there are 160 permanently inhabited islands to choose from.

Although no two islands are the same they seem more closely bonded to one another than to the Greek mainland – a far-flung community of tiny villages linked together by the sea. Unlike Athens, where distant views are muted by a perpetual haze and the pervasive sound of traffic never ceases, the island villages seem to grow from and become part of their natural environment. Perhaps the most striking thing about the islands is the brilliant clarity of the vistas, the crisp contrast between sparkling white buildings and the somber rocky landscapes. The incredible whiteness of the buildings is accented by the sparse use of bright blue trim. The colour of the islands is predominantly white and blue – the colours of the Greek national flag.

For those with time and an open-ended schedule island-hopping by ferry is the ideal way to see the islands but taking one of the packaged cruises from Piraeus is a good compromise. With only 10 days left in our Greek odyssey Betty and I opted to sample the islands aboard the Atlantis, a small freighter converted to cruise ship, which gave us long stop-overs on five of the Greek Islands plus a side trip to Ephesus on mainland Turkey.

From Piraeus the Atlantis threaded her way through the outer islands of the Cyclades, the cluster of islands closest to the Balkan peninsula of southern Greece. Named for their circular distribution around the sacred island of Deles the Cyclades form a distinct community of small island towns with a long history of inter-island trade. They were the first to embrace tourism and Mykonos, where we are headed, has become one of the most visited of all the Greek Islands. Renowned for its swinging night life Mykonos is the place for adrenaline-pumped revellers looking for a post-Olympic party.

The island itself is a dry, windswept rockscape, barren of vegetation except for sun-baked brush and a scattering of olive trees. The appeal of Mykonos is the town. Once little more than a stopover for pilgrims en-route to Deles, Mykonos Town has grown into a cosmopolitan community without losing the charm and diversity of its checkered past. During the Byzantine period the city huddled within a protective wall built by the Venetians. Later it was settled by pirates who ran a lucrative market in plundered goods. Today the heart of town is still the waterfront of the old fishing village but the shops and boutiques offer high class merchandise at rip-off prices that would gladden the heart of the most avaricious pirate.

We leave the Atlantis and walk along the quay, past a gaggle of brightly painted fish boats. A broad flagstone boulevard sweeps around the harbor, separating waterfront shops and cafes from the rocky beach. It is mid-day and hot, but an off-shore breeze makes the waterfront the place to be. The outdoor cafes are crowded with locals and tourists sitting out the heat of the day in the shade of colourful umbrellas. We find a table and join them for a long cool drink before setting out to explore the town.

It is almost impossible to navigate Mykonos Town's maze of narrow streets, archways, and dead-end courtyards without getting lost. The simple lines and smooth surfaces of whitewashed houses and shops merge with the whitewashed surfaces of walls and blue-domed churches. Outside stairways lead to second-storey dwellings, some of which meet in archways over the road. Here and there the glistening white buildings are highlighted by brilliant splashes of colour – hanging baskets cascading with flowers, a green bougainvillea vine with scarlet blossoms, a freshly painted bright blue balcony.

The jumble of cuboid and domed buildings seems to have dropped into place without any semblance of a plan. But when the town was built the Cyclades were swarming with pirates and the plan was to pack as much of the town as possible inside the protected perimeter of the medieval fortifications. And if the wall was breached the labyrinth of streets and overhanging balconies was sure to baffle the raiders and give an advantage to the defenders.

After several false starts we made our way up to a line of thatched windmills on Kato Myli ridge overlooking the town, found a place to sit, and watched the sun dip into the ocean. Once used to grind corn brought in local ships from the surrounding islands the windmills, now one of the most photographed structures on Mykonos, have become symbolic icons of the Greek Islands.

From Mykonos the Atlantis steamed east to Ephesus on the Turkish mainland. After a day exploring the ruins there we continued on to the Greek Island of Patmos, one of the smaller Dodecanese islands which lie off the west coast of Turkey. In AD 95 St. John the Divine is said to have made the same trip, though not entirely out of choice. Banished from Ephesus by the pagan Roman Emperor Domitian, St. John moved into a cave on Patmos where he got in touch with God and spent his time writing the Book of Revelations (the Apocalypse).

Recognition was slow in coming but about a thousand years later, in AD 1088, a monastery was built in his honour and today the Monastery of St John still dominates the skyline above Patmos Town. Looking more like a medieval fortress than a church the huge hulking structure was designed to repulse pirates with stone battlements rather than trusting to divine intervention. Unlike Mykonos the square white buildings on Patmos, which surround the monastery, were never crammed inside a defensive perimeter and the town, at least by Greek standards, has an open aspect with good views of the harbour and ocean.

From the harbour at Skala on the east coast of Patmos we followed a cobblestone path leading up to the Monastery of St. John, a distance of about 3 km. About half way along we stopped at the Monastery of the Apocalypse where a chapel now stands on the very spot where St. John got his divine briefing. The resident monk showed us the cave where the rocks were riven by the voice of God, "like the sound of trumpets", instructing John to "write what you see in a book and send it to the seven churches". Our genial guide pointed out the rock which Prochorus, John's loyal disciple and scribe, used as a desk. Considering that he had neither laptop nor tape recorder the 14 pages of the Book of Revelations are a truly remarkable bit of journalism. Crammed with dire predictions, bizarre creatures, and a sense of doom the Apocalypse suggests that John was having a really bad trip. Of course there are doubters who contend that time and many tellings have skewed the facts but that has not deterred the curious and the devout from making countless pilgrimages to Patmos.

It would take a lifetime to truly savour the Greek Islands and much more space to recount even our own brief experience. The Islands have something for everyone – nightlife, up-scale boutiques, serene beaches, traditional Greek villages, and a history that goes back to the very beginnings of western civilization.