Hydra is a little island paradise floating just off the Greek coast, about an hour and a quarter by fast ferry from Athens. However, paradise was broken by tragedy our last day there.
That first evening we arrived on the Flying Cat 4 Ferry from Athens at about 18:00. We walked two minutes around the corner to our guesthouse, the Botsis. The owner was out, so he just left the room open for us. We are on the top floor with a patio looking out over the town to the harbor. The room isn’t huge, but it is comfortable enough. It took us five minutes to settle everything in for the week.
Kodylenia’s Taverna is about a fifteen minute walk out of Hydra Town, in the village of Kamini. We have been here before, so I know for a fact this is the best sunset view around town. I have been looking forward to eating here and watching the sunset for the past three weeks.
So, it is a perfect place for our first evening dinner.
We walked along the shore, a warm evening with the waves crashing below, just enjoying the fact that we were back in Hydra, lamenting the fact that we will be going home in a week.
At Kodylenia’s we grabbed a table at the edge of the patio, looking west over the sea.
Here is the view: Mainland Greece (where it hangs down on the Pelo Peninsula) runs the length of the northern horizon, visible across the channel. The Island of Dokos is floating west of us. There are a few other scattered little islands with a single church on them.
We ordered our wine and mineral water first, and toasted the sun as it set just right there in front of us. As the lights of the villages on Greece started to come on, the owner invited us back into the kitchen to see what he was making that day.
I looked at all the things in the glass case, and selected Rooster in red wine sauce, the Greek version of coq au vin. Gail chose eggplant rolls and a salad.
We ate slowly, just enjoying the view, enjoying our time on this island, until well past dark.
We walked back into Hydra town to the Pirate Bar and had a Tom Collins and Peña Colada, and finally went up to our room about midnight:thirty.
So I was up early.
There is no place close in to swim in the mornings, but there are a couple cafés open early for coffee. I picked one close to the lion statue, along the waterfront, where I could watch the mule drivers and hand cart pushers start to unload the supply ships.
I ordered a double espresso macchiato, sat and watched, then went for a walk.
The sunrise was flat, no real color, and the morning breeze was hot. I walked around by the mouth of the harbor, climbing up where the old cannons are that protected the harbor, and looked back at the town. That is when I realized that Hydra seems a lot like Italy; the architecture, the church bells ringing, the food.
When Gail woke up we went down to the harbor again and found a little café, almost more of a dessert place, where Gail ordered a frozen yogurt and fruit, I had yogurt with muesli, and we both had coffee.
This became our breakfast spot for the next six mornings; every morning we ordered the same thing, and the owner soon got to know us, often greeting us in the afternoons as we returned from the beach. “Yassas,” with a smile and wave.
Yassas.
It is two, maybe two and a half kilometers up along the coast from Hydra town, a really nice half hour walk.
The beach is rocky, with smooth pebbles, and there are three rows of well-spaced, thatched umbrellas with beds. The beds cost €4 for the day. The water is blue and warm, and waves kick up when the taxi boat zooms by.
Just off the beach, the Church of Agios Ioannis sits on the highest point of a rock island.
But the best part about Vlychos is the Enalion Taverna. There are two guys who bring food and drinks to us right on the beach. Sparkling water, beer, wine, snacks; everything is available right at the beach. Later, when we got tired of waiting for service, we just walked the twenty steps up to the Enalion Taverna on our own for a snack of pork bites (in lemon honey sesame mustard sauce) and carafe of rosé.
Back to the beach.
Rainbow unicorn floaties seem to be a thing here. Several kids, girls mostly, have them, and one of the taxi boats has a huge one tied, like a mascot, on to of the cockpit.
The big Flying Cat 4 ferries go by, throwing waves crashing in, rattling the rocks.
A group of eight, stereotypically loud Americans sit on the beach two rows behind us. Everyone can hear the conversation, though no one wants to.
The water ship is gone, replaced by a desalinization plant.
Mandraki Beach charges really high rates now for their beach access, so we won’t go there.
The dirt walkway along the coast is now paved and lit all the way to Vlychos.
The beaches and cafes are a little busier, and the ferries seem to drop off more people.
You could never say this is an undiscovered island.
What then is the charm?
One of the best island traditions lives on: they still use mules and handcarts to move things around, and still ban cars and scooters. I don’t know how many more years this will last; in fact if I caught word that cars were allowed on the island I wouldn’t return, period. It is this simplicity, this lack of noise and traffic that makes Hydra such a magical place.
They still have the cool cafe sunshades all along the harbor, rigged like sails on lines, so as the sun comes up they can unfurl the shades, pulling them in at sunset.
That evening for dinner we walk back out to Kamini, to eat at a restaurant called To Pefkaki. The restaurant straddles the path, a couple tables on the ocean side, a couple on a higher rock platform on the inland side, maybe six in all. It is a family run place, the son helps dad cook fish on the grill and serve tables, while mom cooks and does the money.
It is fun watching everyone walking through on the way back to Hydra town.
For dinner we had sea bass. That’s it. Grilled, fresh caught sea bass and wine. And it was one excellent fish.
Funny how some things however don’t seem to translate. I catch the young waiters eye.
“Yes?”
“May we have more ice?” I point at our water glasses.
“Yes.” Big smile.
And that was it. He went back to serving everyone and us, but no ice.
Later I asked if they have baklava?
No.
Coffee?
Yes.
Espresso.
yes.
Espresso macchiato?
Blank look .
I motion: espresso one hand, little milk other hand.
He brightens up. “Yes!” He is very excited with this discovery.
And so I ended up with an excellent, thick creamy espresso...
And a little container of that fake milk creamer stuff.
The straight espresso was just right!
We ended the night at a different bar on the other side of the harbor. Strong winds kept the boats jumping. I was hoping one of the smaller ones would pop right up, out of the water. It was fun to watch people try to walk the gang plank on and off the sailboats, especially if they had been drinking.
Very high winds. A front moving in. The water in the harbour was so choppy it was spilling out onto the quay and walkways, like a too full coffee cup spilling over the rim.
The drinks were just OK, but it was a great night watching the action.
It is warm enough the circadas are still buzzing, the background music of these Southern European countries.
The water in the bay is mirror calm. A rooster is growing up the hill, the two men to my right are talking, the two behind me sit silently staring. There is another cluster of four over at the left corner of the waterfront in front of the bakery.
I already have my table staked out and have ordered the same thing two mornings now; I’ll see if he simply brings it to me tomorrow.
The old decorative cast iron lights along the harbour turn off and the sun is just coming up.
The strings of mules have been brought down and are waiting by the cargo ship that came in last night.
What about the mule poop you ask?
Well shit, that’s a great question!
If you own a mule, you own a plastic bag, hand broom and sweeping tray. If your mule poops inside the Hydra Town limits, you sweep it up.
Seriously.
Keeps things clean, and there is none of the fly problem like in Egypt.
It’s a funny thing, a guy will be riding or leading a string of mules, and one goes, so he runs back muttering to sweep it all up while the mules just plod on ahead.
A Hydra traffic jam: two strings of mules going opposite directions meeting in a narrow alleyway.
This is a very small island, so it works.
The one concession is the trash truck. It comes along and everything goes in it, kind of grinds it up.
Oh, and the ambulance and fire pickup-truck.
I watched the garbage thrower signal for a coffee while he was tossing trash. Sure enough, the cafè owner trotted an espresso out to him.
Have you ever seen a mule carrying four, 4x8 foot sheets of sheetrock lashed on their back? Or cartons of bottled water, sacks of ready mix concrete, a new stove for someone’s kitchen...
A different way of life.
Interesting to live it for a week.
The church bells strike seven, then start clanging to call the start of morning mass.
I drop my two euros for the coffee and wander off.
We spend the second day twenty minutes further down the coast (a solid 45 minute walk from town) at Vlychos Plakes Beach.
The Four Seasons Resort is here, so the food and drinks are a little more upscale, and most of the front row umbrellas are already reserved. Still we get a good one at the end of the second row for easy access.
This beach is half sand, half rock, and the swimming is great.
There is a shower and a guy bringing the orders around.
Well we were enjoying Vlychos Plakes Beach, swimming and laying around, and huge clouds started to build over the mainland, across the channel. It started to thunder and it must have been raining because Greece just totally disappeared on the horizon. The waves picked up, but it was still sunny and hot where we were.
Suddenly, just before 13:00 clouds came charging over the hills behind us, building quickly and blocking the sun. A clap of thunder and then cold drops of rain hit my warm back.
Everybody tucked stuff under the umbrellas and decided now would be a good time for a food break.
Including us.
The taverna was packed.
In the taverna I ordered kebab giaourtlou ( yummy BBQ lamb on pita with yogurt sauce, onions and tomato) and Gail got an artichoke. We split a half-liter of rosé.
It never really rained, just sputters and drops, and a lot of thunder. It cleared in an hour just like that, and we all went back out into the fresh smelling air.
We got sad news today. Our neighbor and friend, Carl, died last night (this morning for us). We had many good years watching baseball together, and talking about his business days in San Francisco.
Suddenly the sun is not quite so warm, the day not so bright.
Another storm moved in about 16:00 so we packed up and walked home in the cool sputter of occasional raindrops and thunder.
It turns out that the street our guest house is on turns into a wide Main Street, lined by trees and nice stone mansions as it curves up the hill.
It is so different to just walk the streets with no worry of a car or scooter coming along. We both comment on how quiet it is here with none of the background roar of “normal life.”
We came across a pharmacy open since the 1800s with the original furnishings, and found three “hidden” squares with trees, statues and flowers.
The harbor is kind of like an ampitheatre, a small flat area by the water, then hills backing the entire scene, with houses built right up the sides.
And there are cats everywhere.
That is one thing I don’t like about Hydra, and perhaps Greece in general: the cat population is huge. You can’t sit and eat without a cat or three sitting next to you, staring at you; you know they are just waiting for you to choke on a fish bone and drop dead so they can jump up and eat off your plate. You think I am exaggerating?
Not a bit.
Walking down the street cats are everywhere, swarming like hundreds of furry mosquitoes.
We had a “corner view” of the sunset, so this evening I added the color by drinking an Aperol Spritz.
Sunset in a glass.
The food here was really great.
I started with dolmas, made a little different and called Dolmadakia. They were wine grape leaves stuffed with rice, herbs, drizzled under smoked yogurt, with marinated white anchovies and a lemon sauce. We both loved them.
I had homemade potato and parsley gnocchi, with prawns, courgettes (zucchini), pickled wild mushrooms and aged arseniko cheese with a truffle cream sauce. The portion was modest but every bite was delicious.
Gail had a media pasta with fresh tomatoes, seasonal vegetables, olives, Greek herbs, salt baked anthotyro cheese, rocket (arugula) and pine nuts.
After dinner we walked back into Hydra town, to a little garden bar by our guest house; a place with really comfortable seating under the trees, strings of lights and candles everywhere, and good music.
It is called Plako Stroto. You can go there for the cool evening seating. But the drinks?
Not so much.
For some reason I felt like a baklava, and so we spent the next little while chasing it down.
There is a little local café next to our place, in business since 1865, but they don’t have baklava. She directs me to the place around the corner. We go around the “next corner” which was actually the second corner because we missed the squeezed little passageway, and stopped at another café from the 1800s, who directed us over past the statue in the park to the bakery and THEY had the baklava.
Since 1880 something.
The business, not the baklava.
It was good, but a little too much honey for me. The bitter espresso cut it just right.
The guy who owns the little breakfast place we go to every day greets us every time we walk by.
The café owner where I drink coffee in the mornings greets me with a nod, saves the Ya sas until he brings my espresso doppio which I no longer have to order, claps me on the shoulder when I drop the euros in his hand. The other regular guys no longer stare at me, they nod as I slide into my seat.
The taverna we ate at the second night (the great fish place) is right along the path to the beach; we pass by two or four times a day, greeted by their smiles each time.
Oddly, the one person we never see is the guy who owns our little six room guest house. The day we arrived there was a note: room six, the key is inside.
OK.
But we have never met.
We have had no problems, everything is provided, beach towels included. But we want to get a load of laundry done at some point, and I do need to pay him one day.
Gail just shrugs and says, “Let’s go beach.”
Well, that morning started the same: espresso, watching the ships and miles, listening to the Greek chatter around me. I just cannot catch any of the words.
Breakfast as usual, and a short walk.
But this morning we ran into the guesthouse owner (SURPRISE!) so I settled the bill and we dropped a bag of laundry off.
Free!
“The machine, it doesn’t complain.” sez he.
We have decided to explore the beaches on the far side of the island, specifically Bisti Beach way round the tip.
There is a trail there but it is 4.5 hours walk, so we opt for a taxi boat that will take us at 10:30 and pick us up at 17:00.
Even by boat it is about a 25 minute trip. It’s interesting to see Hydra from the water, until now we have always just walked the paths.
Bisti is a very peaceful, small curve of a beach, half sand half rocks, easy to wade in and swim in the cool water. Pine trees crowd down to shore, and there is a small island called Petasi, just about swimming distance from the shore. There is a line or two of umbrellas, all taken by the first two boatloads of people who arrive (we were in the first boat and so got a water front set of beds) and a very small plywood sort of a bar-taverna with an old refrigerator kept running (after arrival) by a generator.
The taverna is not great, since everything has to be delivered by taxi boat. They have some beers and some drinks until they don’t, and an odd salad or sandwich… until they don’t. Maybe a bag of chips or some cold water.
Now that I’ve had time to sit and reflect, I think Hydra is a fun place to sit and watch.
Watching the ferries come and go, especially the Flying Dolphins lifting up off the water on their hydrofoils.
Watching the water taxis with their flashing lights zoom by, like they are delivering bodies to the hospital emergency room instead of to the beaches.
It’s a fun place to watch the burros, and watch the 105 ways people cope with no vehicles.
It is a great place to people watch; the old residents like the lady who rides into town every day, side saddle on her fast trotting burro, and the young Italian girls in the lastest fashions and swimsuits.
It’s interesting to watch the big, multi-million dollar yachts, and the sailboats come and go.
I am starting to pick favorite boats out of the crowd of fishing boats, because of their paint or innovative modifications some of the owners have made. Things like a painted map of Hydra Island and the surrounding rock (islands?) like a chart, or the guy who has his scale hung right there so he can weigh out and toss you a fresh fish.
We found the good wine shop, hidden behind a blank door just around the corner, with no signs or indications it is there; a store with great bottles of wines from Greece, recommended by the owner to match your taste, bottles that can be had for eight and ten euro.
Every bottle we buy he says, “You come back and tell me how it is.” And we do, and he further refines his choices every time so by the end we are drinking really well on few euros.
And any reservation made for the evening means “I will show up within an hour or so of when I said.”
Every morning at 7:00 the church bells chime the hour, then clang the “Wake up and get to mass, now!!” alarm. The first morning ferry arrives just after with one toot of its horn. And that is the signal for the mules and packers and handcart pushers to all show up on the waterfront ready to unload supplies and deliver passenger luggage.
This night we change and eat dinner in town, above the harbor, at Psaropoula, in business since 1911. We have a table right on the edge of the terrace, looking over the harbour, so we make a 20:30 reservation and watch the sunset first from across the way, then show up “on time” at 20:50.
We split a salad with smoked salmon, avocado, cashews and citrus sauce. This was really good, and I got all the salmon!
We decided to go for it and split a pasta with lobster dinner for two. It tasted good, but the lobster was over-cooked and the sauce nothing too special. It wasn’t bad, but it sure wasn’t great like the last few nights.
Still, drinking wine while watching the lights come on around the harbour, spying down and listening to the people below.
We stayed for espresso and baklava with ice cream, and they did the baklava right: more crispy thin crust and walnuts, and less honey drippage.
They comped us the local liquor, mastic, and we watched the almost-full moon rise right over the church.
Days pass in a pleasant blur:
Wake up, coffee, sit, walk, breakfast, beach, eat, drink, sunset.
That's what is nice about Hydra.
No real sites to see.
No historical stuff to waste your time.
Oh sure, you can dig up a local house or two turned into something, or visit an art gallery, but Why?
And you can go hike to the very top of the island, but again, why?
Thankfully (for me) there is not much shopping. Gail goes for about an hour each afternoon.
So that leaves:
Drinking
Eating
Beach
Swimming
Reading
Napping
Repeat.
Ok. I do have decisions to make.
Beer or wine?
Red white or rosé?
Yesterday’s t-shirt, or a new one, or no shirt at all.
Flip flops or barefoot.
Fish or shrimp pasta?
This great beach or that great beach?
So it is back to Vlychos Beach with its great umbrellas and warm water, and the wonderful Enlion Taverna.
For mid-day snack we have shrimp saganaki and cod bites with garlic paste.
White and rosé wine, mineral water, and we are good to go.
And because it is the “walking to” beach, we arrive now by 10:00 and don’t bother leaving until 18:00.
This night there is a huge thunder and lightning storm right after we returned to the room. We opened up the doors to the patio and enjoyed it, our first real rain in two months.
The church bells started going crazy as the thunder boomed...
So we felt no particular need to honor the reservation either, nor do I feel any obligation to tell you the name of the cute looking place.
Instead we went down the street to Gatto Nero.
Because of the rain, all the outside seating was totally open (the cozy interior was packed) but they quickly dried off a table and two chairs for us so we were set!
Within fifteen minutes the outside was packed up, as people saw us eating. Gatto Nero needed a full-time, table-and-chair wiper-offer person!
I had tasty tagliatelle with mushroom and sausage, while Gail got ravioli with ricotta and spinach. Both plates were well portioned and very good.
After, we walked over to our breakfast hangout for a lemon gelato and an espresso.
It turned out to be a great meal.
We started off like normal: coffee, etc. and the walk to Vlychos. Beach, waves lapping in, warm sun, good food, the feel of the warm, silky salt water sliding around me…
And the first text message arrived:
Our little home is surrounded by a forest fire, burning right into the town!
The Carr Fire, which eventually burned well into the city, destroying Whiskeytown National Park, and roaring up through Trinity County on it’s way to destroying well over 100,000 acres and 800 homes, had just started up and was raging totally out of control.
Suddenly it was hard to relax, as I texted many friends at different locations in town (I could kind of track fire location that way) and Googled up fire maps and wind directions, weather forecasts and the latest updated news releases.
It is an odd, odd felling to be sitting on a beach, on an island in Greece, calculating the chance that you will have no home to return to.
Our kids got hold of us right off, and both headed up to see what they could pull out of the house. Gail and I came up with a quick list (papers, computer, family photos in the truck) and we sat and waited.
Nothing we can do.
I guess living simply out of a backpack for two months every year now has made us realize how much we are burdened at home by crap and stuff.
But still… the memories.
We spent a lot of time hoping the best for our friends.
To cut to the end of the story (it is now almost a week later, and I am just finishing this blog post because our time was filled with this instead)…
To cut to the end of the story, we were spared evacuation by less than a mile. Though embers drifted in around us and started small spot fires. Looking at the size of the ask and golf-ball sized embers, the half burnt leaves and crispy pine needles, I just don’t know how our neighborhood didn’t burn. Our kids got there safe, had the stuff ready to go, but were able to leave after a day or two when the wind shifted. The first night we were home, we had the neighbors over and we all drank to our good luck.
But it is a mess here. Tons to clean up, the sky is dark and hazy all day, smoke smell everywhere. Lots of homes burned, (over 1000) sirens going all the time still as fire trucks go here and there in town, and the fire is still burning strong and spreading, just not at us. Right now as I type this, six people are dead, 20 missing, and at 115,000 acres this is now the sixth largest fire in California history and climbing the list.
And while we have kept our home memories safe, sadly Whiskeytown and the drive into the Trinity Alps will never be the same in my lifetime.
Back to Paradise:
Our last dinner was at Manna, a little place across the street from Gatto Nero.
Gail had tasty “Takos” with cod, avocado, a mousse-lime sauce with coriander and garlic.
I had a tight, small Orzo pasta with shrimps, cherry tomatoes, lime bisque, and cream cheese.
Both meals were good.
They brought us a complimentary cup of Gespacho to start. Up to this point in life, I thought Gespacho was the father of Pinocchio.
We were comped glasses of Muscat at the end, as we watched the Blood Moon, the red eclipse, happen.
They used to say it is a bad omen; afterwards we walked back to the room and tried to keep up on the fire news.
The last morning we said our goodbyes to the bar owner (I let him know not to have coffee ready for me the next day) and café owner (thanks for all the great breakfasts).
We dropped our key off on the empty desk (still only met the owner that one time) and caught the 11:00 Flying Cat 4 ferry to Athens.