Hydra

Hydra is unlike any other Greek island, and the difference is immediate. No cars, no scooters, not even bicycles are permitted; goods move by donkey and mule, people move on foot, and the water taxis buzz between coves. The result is a harbour of rare grace, where an amphitheatre of grey-and-ochre stone captains' mansions climbs the bare hillside above a crescent of cafes, their eighteenth-century grandeur a legacy of the shipping and sea-trading fortunes made here.

The island reached its peak in the decades around 1800, when its merchant fleet was among the largest in the Aegean and its shipowners financed a decisive part of the Greek War of Independence. That heritage survives in the arsenal-like mansions ringing the port, several open as museums, and in the cannons that still guard the harbour mouth. In the twentieth century Hydra drew a different fleet, of painters, writers and musicians; Leonard Cohen famously bought a house here in 1960, and the island's bohemian glamour has never quite faded.

Because there are no roads to speak of, Hydra is explored on foot or by boat. Stone paths climb to the monasteries on the ridge above town and out to the hamlet of Vlychos, while water taxis ferry swimmers to rocky lidos and the pine-fringed bay of Bisti. There is no sandy beach of note; swimming is off rocks and concrete platforms into deep, clear water, which somehow suits the island's elegant austerity.

Hydra is at once the easiest and the most distinctive Saronic day trip, reached from Piraeus in around ninety minutes, yet it rewards an overnight stay when the excursion boats leave and the harbour softens. In the evening quiet the stone lanes empty, the cats settle and the only sounds are footsteps and the sea against the quay. It is a place for slow walking, long lunches and the pleasure of a town preserved by the simple, radical absence of the engine.