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A dreamy private paradise on Ithaca island

A lush 100-hectare coastal property is for sale on Ithaca island

Ulysses' Cove on Ithaca

The lovely Ulysses’ Cove property for sale on Ithaca island is shown in an aerial photo from the website FT Property Listings

Ionian idyll: If you’ve been dreaming about spending next summer at your own private Greek Island retreat, here’s your chance to snap up a piece of paradise in Greece’s Ionian islands — a lush, coastal property on Ithaca is up for sale.

Although it’s not an entire island, Ulysses’ Cove is nonetheless an enviable estate-sized property that measures a whopping 1 million square meters (that’s 100 hectares or 247 acres). The expansive and varied terrain encompasses rolling hills and level grounds thickly wooded with trees and verdant foliage, a long forested peninsula, and eight beguiling beaches scattered along gorgeous turquoise waters.

The property includes nine buildings that were constructed in the 1960s in a simple yet elegant style designed to blend seamlessly with the island’s natural environment. The structures include a “charming” villa and cottages that measure 849 square meters in all, and boast a reception hall, living room with fireplace, two kitchens, a formal dining room, nine bedrooms with eight bathrooms, and two rooms for staff. The grounds feature colourful flower-filled gardens and a number of outdoor terraces that would be ideal for al fresco dining, entertaining and relaxing. What’s more, the property comes with its own caique — a 12-meter traditional Greek boat.

“This unique estate may be the ideal haven for a family seeking a private paradise, or it may be developed into an exclusive hotel or collection of holiday homes,” the listing notes.

Ulysses Cove private beach on Ithaca island

One of the estate’s eight enticing private beaches is seen in an aerial photo from the Ulysses’ Cove listing on the Ploumis Sotiropoulos Real Estate Brokers website.

We stumbled upon the Christie’s International Real Estate listings for Ulysses’ Cove while web-surfing possible destinations for our holidays in Greece next year. One of the listings was part of an Aegean Airlines in-flight magazine advertisement by Athens-based Ploumis Sotiropoulos Real Estate Brokers, while the other appeared on FT Property Listings. Photos of the property’s interior and exterior spaces can be viewed on both websites.

While the ads don’t mention the vendor’s asking price (it’s available only upon request), we’re fairly certain it’s a little beyond our personal holiday accommodation budget for 2023. Still, that won’t keep us from imagining ourselves soaking up the summer sunshine on a different private beach every day of the week, hosting family and friends for drinks or BBQ parties on the hideaway’s bay-view waterfront, or spending an afternoon at sea on the Ulysses’ Cove boat.

If you, by any chance, happen to acquire Ulysses’ Cove after learning about it here on the blog, please keep us in mind when you’re planning a list of guests to invite for a holiday stay in one of the cottages. We’d love to join you there! 😉

Top Greece travel reads of 2019: Best island-hopping guides, articles and trip reports

January 20, 2020 / admin / 0 Comments

Cover of the May 2019 issue of The Sunday Times Travel Magazine

The May 2019 edition of The Sunday Times Travel Magazine featured a special Greek Islands travel guide, replete with gorgeous photos of dreamy destinations. I tell you more about the guide on page 2 of this post.

Athens is amazing, mainland Greece is marvellous, and the Peloponnese peninsula is pretty darned impressive. But for many people, it’s the Greek Islands that typically come to mind when talk turns to the subject of vacations in Greece. Indeed, if you tell someone that you’re heading to the Hellenic Republic for a holiday, they’ll probably ask which islands you’re planning to visit.

Since island hopping draws millions of tourists to Greece each year, many of whom are first-time visitors, there’s tremendous demand for information about where to go, how to move between places, and what to see and do. Likewise, there is a massive amount of Greece travel material available on newsstands and on the web. A simple Google search will produce links to articles and guides galore; thousands in fact, published by major magazines, newspapers, bloggers and social media influencers. One could easily spend weeks sifting through all the self-described “best” or “ultimate” island hopping guides, along with scores of feature stories trumpeting “hidden gems,” “undiscovered islands,” or the newest trendy “paradise.”

I read hundreds of them in 2019, but found the vast majority disappointing and a waste of valuable reading time since they lacked originality and didn’t offer much useful information. Most were simply puff pieces full of flowery descriptions and little else. Many were so similar, I’m sure the content was cribbed from quick online searches, then hastily rewritten and repackaged with stock photography.

But several magazine and website guides stood out because they contain what I consider to be good, practical advice to help travellers pick the islands best suited to their personal travel preferences and lifestyles, and to plan how to get where they want to go.

Also noteworthy was a small selection of fascinating stories and engaging essays in which travel writers and even some high-profile authors recounted delightful and eye-opening personal experiences while visiting multiple islands.

This post spotlights the guides and stories that were my personal favourite reads during 2019. They’re the magazines I keep on my bookshelf, or the blog posts and website articles I have bookmarked on my computer, to keep close at hand for easy future reference. They include:

♦ A superb, detailed guide by The Mediterranean Traveller blog that promises — and delivers — “everything you need to know” about island-hopping;

♦ An excellent 26-page guide by The Sunday Times Travel Magazine;

♦ General island profiles and trip suggestions in pieces published by the travel magazines Indagare, Afar and Lonely Planet;

♦ An insightful 5-part report by a travel writer for The Guardian on his personal odyssey to explore six out-of-the-way islands;

♦ Reports by writers for the Boston Globe newspaper and Travel + Leisure magazine on trips that combined enormously-popular Santorini with visits to lesser-known and much-less-busy islands in the Cyclades;

♦ An intriguing essay from Town and Country magazine in which a prominent author reflects on his holiday travels to Spetses, Paros, Antiparos and Crete;

♦ Two separate stories on travelling by charter yacht or sailboat in the Ionian islands, from The Sunday Times Travel Magazine and World Traveller magazine;

♦ An account of a superyacht island-hopping tour of the Greek Riviera and several islands in the Argo-Saronic Gulf; and

♦ An article profiling small cruise ships with itineraries that include stops at several Greek islands.

Though they were published last year, these reports will still provide an excellent reference resource for travel in 2020 and the next several years. Even if you don’t need them to plan your own vacation, they’re all interesting and fun reads that will quickly put you in a blissful Greek holiday state of mind.

— Best island hopping guide —

Screenshot of The Mediterranean Traveller guide to Greek island hopping

It’s easy to make the decision to spend a vacation on one or more islands in Greece. The hard part is figuring out how to get to and from the island(s) you want to see. Many first-timers think it will be a breeze planning their itineraries, but quickly discover that the Greek Island ferry system isn’t as straightforward as they expected. In fact, it can be a rather daunting task to plan a multi-island holiday, particularly for ferry travel in off-season or low-season periods.

However, help is just a couple of quick clicks away, thanks to a superb guide published by The Mediterranean Traveller blog on February 5, 2019.

Aptly entitled Greek Island Hopping 101 — Everything You Need To Know, it’s the most comprehensive blog post I’ve seen on the subject, packed with tons of helpful tips, advice, information and links, and presented in a format that is super-easy to read and understand. Topics include things travellers need to consider when initially planning their trip; flights versus ferries; an explanation of how the Greek ferry system works; ferry schedules and pricing; descriptions of the different island chains; deciding where to go and when is best to visit; organized group tours, and plenty more.

Please turn to page 2 to continue reading about the guides and articles that may help you determine which islands to visit, or give you inspiration for future holiday destinations.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 2

Even in severe winter weather, Greece’s scenic beauty shines through

January 20, 2018 / admin / 1 Comment

Surf sprays two storeys high as roaring waves crash ashore at the Little Venice area of Mykonos Town, flooding the entire seaside strip of cocktail bar terraces. This photo was posted on the Mykonos LIVE TV Facebook page on January 18, the day gale-force winds raged across much of Greece.

Storm scenes: When wild winter weather swept across Europe this week, Greece wound up in the path of powerful winds that pounded some places, including Syros island, with gusts reaching as high as 122 kmh — the equivalent to force 12 on the Beaufort wind scale.

The fierce winds raged relentlessly on Thursday January 18, toppling trees on several islands, damaging one of the iconic windmills on Mykonos, and preventing planes from landing at Syros airport. The storm disrupted ferry travel and shipping, too, as rough seas forced the cancellation of many sailings as well as the closure of the ports at Lavrio and Rafina. At Piraeus port, the passenger ferry Panagia Agiasou broke away from its moorings during the tempest, while waterfront areas at Mykonos Town, and Kini Beach on Syros, sustained damage from massive waves that walloped the shore.

Although most residents stayed indoors to avoid the incessant blasts of wind, which made walking perilous and even driving difficult, some did venture out to observe nature’s fury and photograph the stormy conditions. I found numerous pictures and videos on social media showing skies filled with massive dark clouds, and huge waves crashing onto seafronts and beaches in Mykonos, Paros, Naxos, Syros, Rhodes, Lesvos, Samos, Skyros, Skopelos, Ithaca, Paxos, Kefalonia, Nafplio, Athens and elsewhere. Many of the images showed that, even in ferocious weather, the scenic beauty of Greece’s coastal areas still stands out.

Takis Vassiliou shot this view of the Nafplio waterfront and Bourtzi sea castle, and shared the image on his Nafplio Kalimera page on Facebook

Maria Alipranti captured sunlight illuminating stormclouds and waves at the Parikia waterfront on Paros. Her photo, and more than 20 others she shot, were shared on the ΠΑΡΟΣ like page on Facebook.

Eleonora Pouwels photographed this scene of waves, stormclouds and sunset at Psiriara beach on Lesvos

Please click on the link below to turn to page 2, where I have posted more photos and several videos that were shared on social media.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 2

Greek Islands featured on covers of major travel magazines

July 14, 2014 / admin / 0 Comments

GEO magazine profiled Greece in its June 2014 issue with a cover photo of Mandrakia village on Milos and an “Escape” feature on the “Secret islands and archipelagos of Greece.” They’re obviously not secret anymore!

Summer reads: When I’m not in Greece I enjoy reading about it — in books, magazines, online travel forums and websites. Thanks to feature cover stories about Greece published by three major European travel magazines recently, I’ve got plenty to read while relaxing on my balcony this summer.

Here’s a look at what the three magazine cover stories say about Greece:

GEO magazine June 2014

I discovered GEO magazine from France purely by chance — I was looking for another magazine at a newsstand when a photo on GEO’s bold green cover caught my eye. It was the picturesque harbour at Mandrakia, a fishing hamlet on Milos, under the headline: “Secret islands and archipelagos of Greece.” I couldn’t resist and bought the magazine after taking only a cursory glance at the contents.

It turns out there are 28 full pages of text and beautiful photos about several Greek islands including Kythera, Kalymnos, Milos, Santorini, Chios, Aegina, Tinos, Skyros, Folegandros and Rhodes. The stories aren’t travel guides — they don’t recommend hotels to stay in, for instance, or suggest the hottest restaurants and coolest beaches to visit. Some of the pieces provide brief descriptions and overviews of the destinations, while others take an insightful look into how the Greek Islands have been affected by the country’s devastating economic crisis. The sale of island real estate to foreign billionaires is considered in part of one report, for example, while another piece profiles people who have started new business ventures selling local agricultural products.

Island village photo foul-up

Mon Dieu! GEO magazine mistakenly published this eye-catching photo of Chora village on Astipalea to illustrate a short piece about Chora on Kythera — another island in a completely different area of Greece.

One of the GEO feature’s excellent photos — spread across pages 36 and 37 — really piqued my curiosity. It shows a white-domed church rising from the middle of a huge stone castle perched on a hilltop. The slopes below the castle are stacked with white cube houses that descend to a row of derelict windmills. I instantly recognized the location — Chora village on Astipalea, a butterfly-shaped island in the Dodecanese archipelago. I had shot photos from almost the identical vantage point when we visited Astipalea in 2009. However, the picture accompanied an article about Kythera, which is part of the Ionian island group, and the text said the town in the photo is that island’s capital, also called Chora. (Most main towns on Greek islands are called Chora).

I haven’t been to Kythera yet, but I was absolutely certain the photo was from Astipalea. So I poured through my photos to confirm I was right (there’s more than 300 pictures in my Astipalea collection on Flickr). Sure enough, details in my pictures of Astipalea’s Chora matched the same features visible in the GEO image, which was credited to Velissario Voutsas /IML – Hemis.fr, a French photo agency. Obviously someone on the magazine staff had made a big boo-boo by purchasing the wrong stock image to illustrate the article!

(You can learn more about Kythera, and see photos showing what its Chora looks like, on the comprehensive Visit Kythera website.)

Photo flop aside, the GEO stories are compelling reads, and are bound to encourage people in France to consider island hopping in Greece on an upcoming vacation. Moreover, photos and information about Leros, Kalymnos, Chios, Skyros and Tinos will encourage travellers to visit charming islands that often get overlooked because they aren’t instantly-recognizable mainstream tourist destinations like Santorini, Paros, Naxos and Mykonos.

Please click on the 2 in the link below to continue reading this report.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 2

New Ionian Islands travel guide available

September 17, 2013 / admin / 1 Comment

The cover of The Ionian Islands online travel guide, published by the Greek National Tourism Organisation, features a photo of a sailboat anchored near Navagio beach on Zakynthos (Zante) island

Free download: A new online travel guide for the Ionian Islands is now available from visitgreece.gr, the official website of the Greek National Tourism Organisation (GNTO).

The 88-page guide features maps, useful phone numbers, descriptions of must-see sights and must-do activities on each island, plus dozens of gorgeous full-colour photos. It’s organized into seven separate sections: Corfu, Diapontia Islands, Paxoi, Lefkada, Kefalonia, Ithaca and Zakynthos.

The guide is available in English, German, Italian, Spanish, French and Russian versions. To obtain a copy of the guide, click on this link to the GNTO downloads page, scroll down, and click on the flag that represents the language you prefer.

Don’t be surprised if you start dreaming of a holiday in the Ionians after seeing just the first few pages of the guide! Below are two of the images that appear in the publication. click on each photo to view a fulls-size version.

The Ionian Islands guide credits photographer G. Augoustinatos for this beautiful image of Antisamos on Kefalonia

The gorgeous sky-blue sea off Porto Katsiki beach on Lefkada. The GNTO guide credits this photograph to the Lefkada Prefecture.

Beach & coastal scenery on Ithaca, Kefalonia & Lefkada islands

June 18, 2012 / admin / 1 Comment

Soaring cliffs provide a breathtaking backdrop to the brilliant blue sea and soft white sand beach at Porto Katsiki on Lefkada island. Photo by Franc Malečkar.

Eyes on the Ionians: We haven’t yet travelled to the Ionian group of islands off the west coast of mainland Greece, but I’m hopeful we’ll finally get there during one of our holidays in the next several years.

There are 11 islands in the Ionian archipelago, with the largest being Zakynthos, Ithaca, Corfu, Kefalonia, Lefkada and Paxoi. As you’d expect from Greek islands, the Ionians boast spectacular scenery — verdant valleys, charming towns and traditional Greek fishing villages, enthralling coastal caves and grottoes, fascinating underground lakes, and beguiling white sand beaches along brilliant cerulean seas.

Franc Malečkar has captured some of that fabulous scenery in the travel photos which he has kindly permitted me to publish below.

The magnificent coastline near the Asos peninsula on Kefalonia. Photo by Franc Malečkar.

Overlooking the Asos peninsula on Kefalonia. A picturesque traditional village, also named Asos, is nestled around a bay on the neck of the peninsula. Photo by Franc Malečkar.