HomeboyMediaNews

For most of us, Greek islands are just for holidays, a week or two in the sun. If that is what you want, that’s fine. But while it is true that several Greek islands have specialised in tourism and offer the quintessential white beaches and windmills experience, to go to a holiday island is to miss the two key roles Greece has played in our own European culture: civilisation and commerce. You only grasp that if you go to a working island. And the working island that best binds together these two traditions is a pearl of the Aegean called Chios.

Civilisation has been around in Chios for a long time. Homer gives a good description of it, the island according to many experts, is one that has best claim to be his birthplace. Commerce has been around a long time, too, for Chios has long been a centre of Greek shipping. Its harbour was mentioned by Herodotus as having space for 80 ships. Its importance is location, being on the narrowest passage from the eastern Mediterranean to the northern Aegean and Constantinople.

Today, more major Greek ship owners come from Chios than anywhere else. While many of them now work from London, they keep family homes on the island. There is also a long tradition of islanders working as captains or merchants, setting up businesses around the world, and returning to their birthplace to retire. Half the jobs on the island are connected in some way with sea transport.

So why choose a non-holiday island for a holiday? We went for a wedding, and that was fascinating in itself. There is great charm embedded in the Orthodox Christian wedding ceremony: the exchanging of crowns over the heads of bride and groom, the chanting, the throwing of rice and so on. Of course, that gives an especially privileged glimpse of local society. 

Chios is big or, rather, big by the standards of Greek islands. It is about 30 miles long, north to south, and about 15 miles across at its widest point. There is a large town, bustling Chios Town, where half the island’s population of 50,000 lives, plus a lot of villages of varying degrees of prosperity. So you need to rent a car to get around.

Of great experience was a walk between two of the main medieval villages of the “masticha” region, Olympi and Mesta. Masticha is a gum that comes from the resin of a mastic tree that has grown on a corner of the south of Chios for thousands of years and won’t grow anywhere else. The mastic, which falls in drops from cuts in the trunk of the trees, has been collected for about 3,000 years, and is mentioned in the writings of Herodotus, Hippocrates and Pliny. The mastic is collected, washed, dried and scraped by hand in the same way as it was back then. In ancient times it was prized as a medicine but now it has a string of other uses: aside from being chewed as a gum, it is also utilised in lacquers, perfumes, orthodontics, cooking and so on.

There are a number of marked paths on the island through scenery of particular interest. The one between Olympi and Mesta is particularly delightful. You start though fields, then climb up over scrub to a tiny church at the top of the hill, then back down on the other side on a medieval pathway to Mesta.

Mesta is the best-preserved of these villages, and in fact very inspiring. Mesta  has a population of about 1,000. We pondered that as we climbed back up through the olive groves to a picnic at the chapel at the top. And isn’t that what holidays should be for? We looked at Byzantine frescoes that were being restored at the island’s most celebrated monastery, Nea Moni, which means New Monastery, inappropriate for a complex originally built in the 11th century. 

Well, another memorable meal was at the Asterias Tavern on the road to Vrontados, where our friends live just north of the main town. And we swam in the buff from an empty beach on the east coast.

If you insist on a more conventional tourist experience, there is one resort on the island, Karfas, which has great beaches and swanky hotels. But what makes a break special, surely, is when you combine having a good time with experiences that help you think again about other societies and what you might learn from them. You can only get that from going to a real Greek island rather than one that has been spruced up for the tourists.

Olympic Airlines (www.olympicairlines.com) and Aegean Airlines (www.aegeanair.com) have regular flights from Athens to Chios. Hellenic Seaways ferries depart from the port of Piraeus, near Athens, for Chios (www.hellenicseaways.gr).

Grecian Castle Hotel, Enoseos Avenue, Chios Town (www.greciancastle.gr). Doubles start at €132 including breakfast. Chios Chandris Hotel, 2 Eugenia’s Chandris Street, Chios Town (www.chandris.gr). Doubles start at €160 including breakfast. Erytha Hotel, Karfas (www.erytha.gr). Doubles start at €70 including breakfast.

Related Links > www.gnto.gr