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Life | Greece Sanctuary] Skiathos #Escape

EJ's note

Do you believe in magic?

The trip started with the late-August bank holiday in the UK—that familiar marker that summer is beginning to wind down, just ahead of Labor Day weekend in the US.

I was looking for a last-minute getaway and decided to tag along with my friend Barbara on her spontaneous escape to Skiathos. There was very little planning involved, which perhaps made it all the more magical.

Sometimes a place arrives in your life exactly when you need it.

You arrive without much of a plan. You walk, swim, talk to strangers, feed cats, discover tiny shops, float in the ocean, eat under the moon, and allow another landscape to hold you for a little while.

No matter how brief it was, it felt magical to be embraced by Mother Nature again.

Enjoy!

P.S.: Make sure to try the iconic Greek coffee - frappé: instant coffee shaken with cold water and ice until it becomes frothy, usually served sweetened and sometimes with milk.

I. Things I loved about Skiathos

Unassuming generosity: Perhaps it’s the influence of Greek Orthodox traditions, but I found the people in Skiathos honest, grounded, and humble. They live and work in a tourist destination, yet nothing felt particularly flashy or performative. I heard that more Italians have started coming to the island, although British visitors still make up a very noticeable part of the summer crowd.
Beach hopping: Barbara introduced me to the concept of “beach hopping.” We hiked along the coastline and stopped at a beach after each stretch of walking. It was such a great way to discover different beaches and their distinct personalities—some more local, some more touristy, some more German, some more British, and so on. Every beach somehow had its own little ecosystem.
Getting around was refreshingly simple: Even the bus system had personality: along the main coastal route, the stops are referred to largely by numbers, running from Skiathos Town toward the beaches.

The airport is incredibly close to town—roughly a 10- to 15-minute bus ride—and public transport costs only a few euros. It made the island feel wonderfully manageable.

Or just get yourself a boat: In theory, you can island-hop by ferry, but what really intrigued me was the idea of renting a small motorboat for the day and exploring the coastline yourself.

For certain small boats—particularly 30HP rentals—you don’t even need a boating licence or previous experience; the rental company gives you a safety briefing before you head out.

This is something I would absolutely do next time. If I were travelling as a couple or with a small family, I would rent a boat for the day, pack some food, and go looking for little coves and beaches that are harder to reach from land.

Our little sanctuary: Our guesthouse was a sanctuary of its own, slightly removed from the town centre—lush with flowers, serene, and tranquil.

Coming back there after being out in the heat all day felt restorative.

And yes, the heat was real: There were moments when the heat felt relentless, especially while hiking. But we championed it somehow.
But everything can be forgiven for magical dinners along the coastline under the full moonlight and starry night.

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A father, a daughter, and a tiny jewelry shop: One of my favorite discoveries was a small boutique jewelry-and-ornament shop run by a father and daughter.

Inside was a small, faded photograph printed sometime in the 1990s: the daughter at around three years old, standing with her father.

And there they were now, decades later, the daughter helping her dad's shop for the weekend.

The father is still an artisan, making things by hand—including delicate hanging mobiles and ornaments. There is something intimate and special about the family-run business.

My Fair Lady: At one point we also came across the yacht My Fair Lady, formerly Regina d’Italia, a yacht with a connection to Stefano Gabbana of Dolce & Gabbana.

I found myself admiring its sleekness—not for the luxury of it, but for the hyper-engineered efficiency of the design. Boats like that are essentially floating architecture, and I appreciated it from that perspective.

Cats. Everywhere: There were cats all over the island. Barbara and I started saving bits of leftover fish and food from our meals so that whenever we ran into one on the street, we had something to give them.

It became another small ritual of the trip.

Greek jewelry & Symbols: I noticed that many of the jewelry pieces in the shops came from Greek designers and workshops, particularly Athens.

Two motifs and makers stayed with me. One was Phaos. The word phaos comes from ancient Greek and means “light”—which felt especially fitting for jewelry discovered on a sun-drenched Greek island. (The following is ChatGPT's explanation: It is also related to Crete’s archaeological mysteries, especially the Phaistos Disc, a Minoan clay disc discovered at the Palace of Phaistos in 1908. Its 241 symbols spiral across both sides, yet more than 3,000 years after it was created, the inscription still has no universally accepted decipherment. Because the Disc is essentially unique, scholars lack enough comparable text to confidently determine its language or meaning. There is something poetic about that connection: phaos means bringing something into the light, while one of Crete’s most famous objects still holds a message that remains hidden from us.

The other was the Vergina Sun, the striking multi-rayed sunburst associated with the ancient Macedonian royal dynasty and famously found on the golden larnax traditionally attributed to Philip II, father of Alexander the Great. I kept thinking about how jewelry can carry history in such a tiny object—you are not simply wearing something decorative; sometimes you are wearing a symbol that has travelled through thousands of years.

Fig trees everywhere: lush fig trees and smells across the island were unmistakable. Figs + Greek yogurt + Greek honey for breakfast = game over!

Stories of the place: I love learning about the history and stories behind a place, so I really appreciated the friendly owner of the snack bar at Mandraki Beach, who had posted the history of Mandraki across the shop windows. I loved that something as ordinary as getting a drink or snack could turn into a small history lesson.

Held by the water: At Elia Beach, I had one of those rare moments when my body completely surrendered to the sea. I floated and drifted, feeling completely safe—as if the water itself were holding me. It brought back memories of Hawai'i and something much deeper from childhood. When I was four, the Hawai'ian ocean nearly swallowed me, and for a long time I carried a fear of ocean water. Once I eventually overcame that fear, the ocean began to feel almost like a mother’s womb: vast, powerful, mysterious, but capable of holding you.

Floating in Skiathos brought that feeling back. A small part of my homesickness - missing Hawai'i - was soothed.

And apparently, if you venture farther around the island, there is also Little Banana Beach, known for being naturist-friendly. We met a new friend, Michael—an ex-military body practitioner and healer—near the boundary between the clothing-optional and clothed parts of the beach. He is a naturist, and listening to him explain the philosophy behind it made the whole concept intriguing to me. There is a similar concept in Hawa'i as well.

I thought: I fully appreciate and respect people's freedom. My life motto = You do you, and I’ll do me.

The family atmosphere was unmistakable: I was nervous that Skiathos might turn out to be a party town, but it didn’t feel that way at all.

I saw people of every age, and perhaps because we were there toward the end of the summer season, everywhere we went we seemed to be surrounded by big Italian families.

When you are dining beside a table of 12 or 15 people—from toddlers and teenagers to parents and grandparents—you somehow begin to feel as though you are part of their family gathering too. Their proximity becomes strangely comforting.

Kids learning to sail: I loved seeing children taking dinghy sailing lessons out on the sea. It felt like the perfect summer childhood activity—learning how to read the wind and water rather than sitting inside somewhere.
Chats with strangers: Barbara is a social butterfly, and one of the benefits of travelling with someone like her is that you inevitably meet people and make new friends in a new country. We met another American fellow lady and ended up hiking with her and also having dinner, learning about her life stories and her upcoming pilgrimage to Santiago De Compostela, Spain.

Barbara is a foodie, so she would ask people for recommendations for good, authentic local restaurants. She also has a thing for remote places and unexpected discoveries. With some Parisian pride, she told me that French people have a particular love for finding places off the beaten path. During our hikes, whenever we ran into French people, she made sure to ask them for directions to the less obvious trails.

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Plane watching: Skiathos Airport is apparently famous among plane spotters because aircraft pass extraordinarily close to spectators as they approach the short runway.

Supermarket discoveries. Some of my favorite discoveries were much less sophisticated: Greek sweets from the supermarket. They became one of my new obsessions. There is something I love about going into an ordinary supermarket in another country and discovering what people actually snack on rather than only eating what is presented to tourists.

A little spirituality everywhere: There was also a quiet spirituality woven into the landscape. Small devotional shrines and altars appeared here and there—outside along the streets and around people's homes—intimate little sacred spaces that almost seemed to emerge from the land itself.

The shrines are part of Greek Orthodox devotional life, but seeing them made me think about the much older human instinct to honor the land, the feminine, the divine, and whatever forces we believe are protecting us.

Running into one unexpectedly always felt like a tiny gift.