Continuing our series on seaside destinations, Adam Ruck delights in Kea, a
seductive and peaceful place where the regulars come to eat well and relax.
Now that Athens has moved its airport away from the city and Piraeus, all the
more reason to take the back door route to the islands. A morning flight, a
short taxi ride to Lavrio and there will be time to look for Byron’s
signature on the temple at Cape Sounion before catching the evening boat to
Kea, with onward connections to the western Cyclades or Syros, hub of Aegean
ferry schedules.
There is only one flaw in this fine plan for an island-hopping tour. Kea is
such a seductive and peaceful place, you may not make it past first base.
As the ferry manoeuvres in the narrow entrance to Kea’s one-horse port,
Korissia, you won’t see a crowd of room touts on the quay, or a flotilla of
tourist boats busking their beach excursions with Zorba the Greek. This is
not the style of an island which missed out on – or cleverly avoided – the
Greek tourism boom and is largely ignored by island travellers because it
has no connection with Piraeus. Kea draws on a civilised clientele of
Athenian weekenders and second home owners in retreat from the city.
Instead of suggestive T-shirts, priapic satyrs and other items of
mass-produced “Greek art” trash, Korissia’s shops sell useful things –
colourful sarongs, masks and snorkels, furniture for the villa. Salads are
not generically “Greek” but made specific by a wild herb or local cheese.
Keans drink less ouzo than the more refined Tsipouro, distilled from local
grape skins, and the word retsina is an insult to the island’s palate, and
its vineyards. “You will have to go to the supermarket for that,” says the
waiter, recoiling slightly.
Kea’s regulars come to eat well and relax, on the beach and in their low-slung
villas, which are made of rust-coloured local stone and set into the steep
hillsides so as not to stand out. There are not many hotels, and fewer ugly
block buildings. Rather than build new roads to remote beaches, the Keans
have restored ancient mule tracks and waymarked them for hikers. Theirs is a
postmodern Greek island.
