Let it be Lent

I remember March on the island last year as being full or wildflowers, soft warm breezes, and lots of time spent outdoors.  We even went swimming in the sea around the end of March.  This time… not so much.  Today we’re waiting for snow.  I’ve never seen snow in Southern Greece except way up in the mountains, in the 12 years I’ve been in and out of this country.  When I lived in Northern Greece (near Thessaloniki), we had snow a few times, even snow that would stick.  Traveling through the very highest mountains in the Peloponnese, I have seen snow.  Here on the island, it hasn’t even gone below freezing yet this year (although it sure feels like it when the humidity is very high and the cold north wind blows).  However, it is currently snowing in Athens, and we have been hearing that snow is expected here as well.

Yesterday was Clean Monday – the day when Greek Orthodox Christians traditionally start their Lenten fast, which lasts for forty days until Easter, much like in the Catholic church, except the calendar is different.  Clean Monday is traditionally a day for kite-flying, because it usually falls somewhere in mid to late March, when there is usually a lot of wind but also a lot of sun.  Aside from the kite flying, there is the eating:  despite the fact that it’s the first day of fasting, there is still a long list of foods (not particularly light, for that matter) which are usually consumed.  I did my best to recreate this for my husband, who, while not a Greek Orthodox Christian, grew up with these traditions and wants to keep them alive.

The Clean Monday feast is called Koulouma, affectionately, and is primarily based on a type of bread called lagana.  Lagana looks very much like focaccia, in that it is flat, squooshy-looking, and has lots of little holes.  I thought about making lagana but decided to buy it at the local bakery, since it occurred to me that maybe they make it in some special local fashion that would be nice to try.  It tasted exactly like normal bakery bread, while costing twice as much.  Oh well.

We also had taramosalata, which is a dip made of running soaked bread, codfish eggs, and oil through a food processor.  Pink food coloring is added in most commercial versions to make it more appealing to 1950s housewives.

We had fasolada, a very basic Greek bean soup made of navy beans, carrots, wild celery, potatoes, and tomatoes.  This is one of my husband’s favorite foods, for some reason; it tastes fine but kills my stomach (I fell asleep at 6:00am, to give you an idea) and we eat beans at least 6 times per week.  We even changed the cooking water.  Oy.

We had olives, both Kalamata (his favorite) and Thassos (my favorite), and olive paste.

We had tsikoudia (well, he did – I think it tastes like rubbing alcohol) which is a Cretan drink much like raki.

We had halva, a sesame seed dessert popular during Lent because its extreme calorie content keeps you going when you’re fasting, I suppose.

End result:  NOW I want to fast.  NOW I don’t want to eat for forty days.

Oh……  I get it now!

Finally a post from the speck in the Aegean

Er… hi.

So, clearly, I didn’t have internet for the past … six months.  I didn’t forget about this blog, I just switched to writing on my computer (diary style) since I couldn’t post.  But a friend gave us a mobile internet stick and I am actually writing this from our house.  So this is what we’ve been up to for the past six months:

We moved back to the same island.  Instead of living in the village where we lived last year, down by the sea, we moved into a small but TWO ROOM apartment (this is exciting – last year it was one room) in the Capital Village (I love saying that) of the island, a huge metropolis of about 100 people.  But it has two grocery stores and a green grocer / butcher!  And restaurants that didn’t close until mid-November!  And a convenience store that only stopped selling newspapers in December!  And my husband can walk to work every day but Thursdays!

I love living in the capital, which is called Chora, which is the same name as the capital village of almost every island in this part of Greece.  Chora means “country,” but in this case it means something like “place where people live” as opposed to “fields.”  I love that I can go shopping every day (which I do) for our daily groceries, and that there are more people around so I don’t feel lonely.

Our apartment is pretty good too.  I will post photos when I have the patience to upload them but the view, in every direction, is breathtaking.  The apartment has a bedroom, a bathroom, and a unified area that serves as a kitchen, dining area, and living room.  The kitchen is better than last year for several reasons.  The refrigerator is the same size (mini) but it *has a freezer* and the freezer does work.  It’s just a shoebox size, but that’s okay.  I’ll take it.  The oven/stove is worse, though.  It’s only got ONE burner.  Think of something really easy to cook.  Spaghetti with tomato sauce.  You need a pot to boil the pasta, and a pan to make the sauce.  What do I do?  I boil the pasta.  When it’s almost ready, I put the pot, without draining, in the sink, and then make the sauce.  Then when the sauce is ready, I strain the pasta and add it to the sauce.  It about doubles the cooking time, of course.  But, that said, it has an oven, which sort of works, which measures about 18″ wide.  It’s okay.

I have a lot more space.  I have counters!  I have a whole counter dedicated just to spices and herbs!  I have a coffee corner!  I have cupboards!  I have a long garlic braid hanging on the wall!  I have a double sink!  And best of all, thanks to my amazing mother in law, I have a pressure cooker, which has completely changed my life and has saved us huge amounts of money in water and electricity, not to mention time.

We don’t have a washing machine or a dryer, so I do the laundry by hand most mornings.  It’s okay … it’s worth it for the other perks.

Aside from the house, we have been doing community theater (my husband thought of it, organized it, and is the director; I’m an actress in it), Spanish lessons, and a political science course in which we learn about Greek and European Union politics (the whole ‘how a bill becomes a law’ thing, which we all learn in school about our own country, but you never learn how they do it in other countries).  I also teach English to a friend.  My husband runs two choruses, one for kids and one for adults.  So our evenings are pretty full.  During the day, after the chores (shopping, laundry, cooking, cleaning), I work on my dissertation (which, I must be honest, was easier when I had internet access).

I do miss the academic community in Athens but I love living here.  My husband and I spend a lot of time together, we eat really well (everything is still homemade, I’ve just gotten better at it), and we are still on the same really strict budget we’ve been on since last June.  It’s all going pretty well.

We traveled a bit:  we went to Syros, a big island out here, and Corfu, a big island far away, for a few days around New Year’s.  We’re planning to hold a wedding and reception (didn’t do that when we actually got married…) in Corfu, so we had to scout out a venue and all that.  We still aren”t sure how to fit it into our budget of almost nothing, but we’ve been saving for it in any case.

There’s a lot more to say and I’ll come back to say it soon, now that I seem to have internet access finally!

And the wait is over!

We have just been notified (finally) that:

1) we are going back to the same island (so, so, so overjoyed about this!)

2) we have to be there tomorrow, which is physically impossible, thanks to ferry schedules, etc.

But at least we know which island we’ll be living on.  Not which house or anything like that, but we know SO much more than we did a few hours ago.

Waiting is the hardest part

Just like in the Tom Petty song.

It’s August 31.  My husband is a schoolteacher in Greece, which means that on September 1, he is required to show up, in person, at the school where he will be teaching for the duration of the 2010-2011 school year.

Last school year, 2009-2010, he was teaching on our little island, a 9 hour ferry ride + 6 hour train ride + 4 hour car ride from his parents’ house in the far NE corner of Greece by the Turkish border.

Our little island is so overrun with tourists in the summer (July and August) that the little house where we were living changes from €240/month to €120/night.  We obviously can’t afford that so we had to pack up all of our belongings into our little Euro car and board the ferry, then the train, and then drive out to his parents’ house, where we dumped all our stuff and the car, before flying down to Athens for my summer job.

When my summer job ended two weeks ago, we flew back to the in laws’ and started staying with them, the idea being that we would use that time to pack up our stuff, stock up on stuff we can’t get on the island (a lot of things), and then start the process of moving back in reverse.

The only problem was that there was no guarantee that we would be going back to the same island.  The Greek system officially considers schoolteachers “soldiers” (peacetime soldiers perhaps, but still soldiers nonetheless) who are expected to carry out orders with no notice and are not considered to have families or personal lives.

So here it is, 9:20pm on August 31, and we are supposed to be on the island by tomorrow.

The only problem is, they still haven’t told us which island to go to.

Because my husband is a teacher, he is paid on the expectation that he shows up at work every day starting September 1.  If we’re not on the island tomorrow, he doesn’t get paid, or more accurately, it gets counted as vacation time (which, obviously, since teachers have the summer off, they don’t get a lot of “extra” during-the-school-year days off).

If we find out tomorrow, and it does turn out to be the same island as last year, which is what we expect, we will not be able to leave tomorrow.  That’s because leaving tomorrow (Wednesday)  means getting to the ferry port on Thursday, but there is no ferry on Thursday.  There is a ferry tomorrow, but the next one is Friday.  So we will not be on the island until Friday.  That’s another day of “vacation” counted against us.

All of course in the context of us being ready to go for the past 12 days at least.

Instead, we’re sleeping on the in laws’ living room couch (not a pull-out couch, just a couch), while their small apartment is full of the two parents, one brother, us, the 86 year old grandmother, and a large dog.  Because we are in the living room in an open-floor-plan apartment, it also is the same room as the kitchen and the dining room and access to the balcony, as well as the place where the exterior door opens into.

This means we are always the last people to be able to go to bed (last night my father in law wanted to watch a basketball game until 2am – and the TV can only be watched by sitting on the couch where we sleep), and we wake up when the first person gets up (which is my brother in law, who comes into the living room/kitchen every morning at 6am to make a cold coffee using a blender.  In between 2am and 6am, the dog is on the balcony barking.  So to say that we get 4 hours of uninterrupted sleep every night would be … generous.  It’s more like 4 hours of interrupted, poor quality, sweat-covered sleeplike substance.

I am so exhausted and I just want to sleep, find out where we’re moving yesterday, get through the two-day journey, find an affordable and decent place to live, unpack our stuff, and start living our lives again.

Summer in Athens

I’m not quite back from my blog hiatus yet, but I just want to put in a short update.

This whole summer I’ve been working in Athens.  That means no peaceful island life, very little home cooking (at least, very little interesting home cooking), and not much of interest to discuss.

Some good news:  there was some question about where we would be living in the fall (as of September 1) because of transfers with my husband’s work.  Well as it turns out, we will definitely be living in the same archipelago.  We don’t know yet, and won’t know until about September 1, on which island, but it will definitely be one of these islands.

After a summer traveling around Crete, Santorini, the Peloponnese, Delphi, and Northern Greece, as well as Athens of course, for my very, very demanding job, I’m very much looking forward to wrapping things up here in Athens in the next few days and then spending a few weeks relaxing at my in laws’ house (actually packing up our stuff for the move back to the islands) and then we should find out where we’ll be living.

Of course our fingers and toes are crossed that we can come back to the same little island, but wherever it is, we’re excited about it.

The economy here continues to be a nightmare.  In a different island group (not ours), unemployment last year was 7.4%.  This year, it’s over 52%.  Yes, more than half of the people who need to be employed are unemployed.  A “Depression” is 25% unemployment.  I don’t even think there is a word for 50+% unemployment.  I’m not sure what the statistics are for our island group, but I will be unemployed by the time we move there, and I will actively be looking for a job.  I am very worried about it but we’re trying to make sure we can survive on my husband’s income alone (we can, barely, assuming they don’t cut it even more – which they might).

Off the grid

I’m 29.  The island got electricity during my lifetime.  It likes to remind us of this periodically.  We went without internet, phone, and fax for three days.  Luckily (in the middle of a fierce heat wave) we got to keep our electricity (i.e., air conditioning).  So I spent the last three days with no connection to the outside world at all.  That means something entirely different when you live on a small island that is already very cut off from the rest of the world.

Yesterday I spent the whole day (9:30am until 5:00pm) teaching my friend Anna how to make bread.  We made bread out of cornmeal, whole wheat flour & seeds, and white flour.  Then our husbands showed up to eat most of it.  It was a very nice way to spend a day.  I love baking bread, and I’m surprisingly good at it, considering that I did it for the very first time about 18 months ago.

The day before that, we watched the World Cup game in which Greece won over Nigeria.  It was a very exciting game, and I really got into it (yesterday, when the USA was robbed of our victory against Algeria, I kept falling asleep, and in fact slept from the point that it was 0-1 Algeria until I was awakened by the screeching commentators complaining about the final score of 2-2 (when it should have been 3-2 USA).   But I really got excited about the Greece game, because Greece actually cares about soccer/football, whereas the USA does not.  (Example:  I have 500 Facebook friends, the vast majority of whom are Americans, and only 2 of them posted anything related to the World Cup game in which the USA very legitimately should have been pissed off.  If the same thing had happened to the Greek team, they’d STILL be screaming about it.)

The day before the Greece game, we went for a night swim in the sea.  We’re in the midst of the first annual heat wave, and the sea is still hot at night.  The water was so warm, in fact, that even I just ran right in and swam, whereas I normally spend half an hour inching my way into the water.

But our big news, aside from being cut off from the world, winning a Big Game, baking lots of bread (and chocolate chip cookies), and swimming in the sea, is that we are on the strictest budget I have ever seen.  Starting on June 16, when we were hit by yet another round of salary cuts (at this point it’s gotten so entirely ridiculous, we are resigned to the fact that my husband’s salary will keep decreasing over time, despite his increasing experience, service, and so on), and facing the reality of moving (expensive) and a number of other upcoming expenses, I sat down with the facts and figures and wrote up a budget.

It started as a yearly budget:  this is what we make, this is what we most likely will spend over the course of a year.

Then it turned into a monthly budget:  this is what we know we make this month, these are the expenses we expect to have this month.

Now it’s a weekly budget:  this is what we have in the bank right this minute, this is how many bottles of non-poisonous water and how many cucumbers we think we can scrape by on this week.

To put things into perspective, it’s now Day Four of The Budget, and so far, for all things (everything from food to gas to medicine to whatever else people spend their money on), we have spent €18.18, of which €12 was for bottled water, and the rest was for tomatoes, three packets of yeast, and lemons.  And we’re hoping we don’t have to spend anything else this week.  Fingers crossed that we can make it through an entire week on less than €20 for everything, because we have a bill next week for €200.

As long as “nothing happens,” and we eat lightly cooked beans (the bottled water won’t last long enough to cook them more than lightly) and the bread Anna gave us from our baking spree yesterday, we should be able to finish out the week without buying anything else except 1 L of milk.  Fingers crossed, because the one thing we absolutely refuse to do is to borrow money (credit card, bank, parents, etc.).  We are going to get by on €20/week living in one of the most expensive places in the entire world.  Because that’s what a small island that uses the Euro in a country with serious economic problems and high inflation and no subsidies for small islands is.

I wanted Mexican food so…

I love Mexican and Tex-Mex food. I grew up in the US, where it’s one of the most popular cuisines. But in Greece, Mexican food (which is almost always Tex-Mex actually) is viewed with suspicion. There are a few “gourmet Mexican” restaurants in Athens and its suburbs, like this one, but most Mexican places cater to tourists from western Europe, not to Mexicans.   In the larger supermarkets in Athens and the other cities, you can find El Paso taco sauce, tortillas, and canned jalapenos, and I’ve even found really good specialty salsa in Athens.

Here on the island… nothing.  Not only is there no Mexican or Tex-Mex restaurant, but there are no Mexican ingredients in the markets here.  I just wanted a burrito, for goodness sake.

Luckily, I had brought a jar of jalapenos from Athens.  I used wheat flour, baking powder, salt, olive oil, canned red beans (dried are not sold on the island), white rice, tomatoes, onions, parsley (cilantro is not sold here either), half of a fresh peach, powdered lime juice (limes are available but extremely overpriced), garlic, cumin, nonfat plain Greek yogurt, and milk to make lunch today:

– wheat flour tortillas (they came out shaped like amoebas, but they tasted terrific)
– red beans
– dry Mexican rice
– peach pico de gallo
– plain yogurt

Ta da!!  (you have to imagine the yogurt, I couldn’t fit it in the frame.)

Mexican lunch!

If I lived in the US, this meal would have taken about 5 minutes, instead of 3 hours, and I could have had refried beans, some kind of cheese (feta didn’t really seem to go…), and real sour cream. All things I probably don’t really need to be eating, now that I think of it.

It was so much better than it would have been if I had used purchased stuff in the US. Even – dare I say it – than if I had gone to a Tex-Mex restaurant in the part of the US where I grew up (nowhere near Mexico!).

I’m starting to learn that most “international” foods are created out of pretty simple ingredients. I’ll never be able to make some things here, but with patience and ingenuity (remember my nonexistent cooking equipment?) many things I had pretty much given up on can be made right at home on this little speck.

Sleepy Sunday

Lunch with a view

Somewhere around 5am this morning I woke up when my husband came to bed. He was not very good company yesterday after Greece lost 0-2 to South Korea in the World Cup. I saw bits of the game and it looked like they weren’t playing very well. Worthy of a comment, but not much more, in my opinion, but my poor dear was pretty upset about it and ended up with a headache that got worse and worse. He took some headache medicine containing caffeine, and thus the 5am bedtime.

So while he slept away the morning, I cooked. I made homemade fat-free tzatziki, homemade almost fat-free hummus, and homemade pita bread. It was my first time making pita bread, and it was a success. Since my main goal is to save money, and this made enough food for two people for an entire day, I tallied up the whole thing and it came to just about €1.70 including some carrots, not including water.

Lunch

This is pretty much what my life looks like these days. I spend about 2 hours every day reading recipes online, trying to find things I can make with what I already have on hand, or with things that I can buy very cheaply, another 4 to 6 hours cooking every day, plenty of time cleaning (mainly the kitchen) and doing laundry, and the rest of my time I spend at the beach or walking around the island alone, with my husband, or with friends.

It’s not a particularly modern lifestyle, but it suits me since it’s only for two more weeks. After that, everything changes dramatically and I will be in a city of 6 million people and it will be hot and I will be exhausted and cranky. I’m enjoying this while it lasts.

World Cup and Focaccia

Today is Saturday, I spent the morning making homemade focaccia while my husband did the laundry and the floors.  We had the amazingly delicious focaccia with garlic-olive oil dipping sauce, and a Greek salad for lunch, after which I did the dishes and put the clothes on the line.  Sounds pretty normal so far, right? And then my husband went absolutely freaking nuts.  He is having something resembling epileptic fits.  It’s because Greece is playing their first game in the World Cup 2010 in South Africa, against South Korea.

I knew he would watch the game – he even watched the Mexico/South Africa and Uruguay/Somebody Else games last night – but I didn’t realize he would take it all so seriously!  This only happens every four years, and four years ago, Greece wasn’t in the World Cup, so this is the first time I’m seeing this reaction.

I’m going to post the focaccia recipe, because we thought it was really delicious.  This is not a food blog, and I’m not going to start taking photos of everything I cook, but it’s something to do instead of pretending to follow the game.

Caramelized Onion and Olive Focaccia

I got the original idea from here and also here, but after reading this article, I decided to use this recipe here and alter it as seemed appropriate.

Ingredients

240 gr (2 cups) white all-purpose flour
1 cup warm water, divided
1 packet (7-8 gr) active dry yeast
1 tsp white sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1 tbsp and 1 tsp olive oil, divided
5 whole Kalamata olives
2 tbsp dried rosemary
1 tbsp dried thyme
2 medium red onions

Instructions

1. Heat the water very briefly in a tea kettle (or, if not using bottled water, just use warm tap water) and pour 1/2 cup water into a mixing bowl.

2. Sprinkle the yeast over the top of the water, followed by the sugar. Let sit for 10 minutes. The yeast should foam up. If it doesn’t, throw it away and buy fresh yeast.

3. Add the flour to the water and mix well; start adding the water bit by bit as you mix it until it reaches a moist but not overly sticky consistency.

4. Flour your kneading surface. Put the dough onto the surface and start kneading it. It doesn’t need to be kneaded very long. I usually knead bread dough for 10 minutes, and the recipe called for 1 minute; I did it for more like 5 minutes and it came out great. I ended up having to add a bit more flour as it was too wet; the original recipe never specifies how much water the recipe is supposed to use, so I overestimated.

5. Shape into a ball. Wash and dry your mixing bowl well. Put 1 tsp of olive oil into the bowl and coat the sides well. Put the dough ball into the bowl, rolling it around so it is coated lightly in oil on all sides. Cover tightly with plastic wrap and then drape a kitchen towel over the top. Leave the bowl in a warm spot. Note the time, because in 45 minutes, we will come back to the dough. Preheat your oven to 245 degrees Celsius.

6. Turn on your burner to medium heat with a largish saucepan on it. Clean and slice two medium red onions. The slices should be about 1/8″ thick (normal onion slices) and all about the same thickness. At this point, add 1 tbsp olive oil to the saucepan. Separate the rings. Once the oil is hot enough to make a piece of onion sizzle, add all the onions to the saucepan.

7. Stir the onions well so that they are all coated in olive oil. Stir slowly but more or less continuously for a few minutes. Then you can stir every 30 seconds or so (but for 10-20 seconds each time) until the onions turn golden.

8. Lower the heat a little to one tick below medium, and continue stirring the onions. It took mine about 25 minutes to caramelize so don’t rush them – it’s worth the wait. Withdraw them from the heat when they are brown but not burned. Put them on a plate, so they don’t continue to cook in the pot.

6. 45 minutes after the dough started rising, check on it: it should have doubled. Mine more than doubled, but it had a much wetter consistency than bread dough; it turned out great so I guess that’s how it’s supposed to be.

7. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper. Put the doubled dough ball onto the cookie sheet. Gently press out the air while also pushing the dough so that it spreads over the cookie sheet. Mine ended up pretty thin (about 1/4″). All the recipes say to brush with olive oil at this point – I didn’t, and it was great, and it saved some calories, but I suspect it would be worth doing, and next time I probably will. Cover with plastic wrap and wait 15 minutes.

8. Slice the Kalamata olives, removing the pit, into small pieces (about 8 pieces per olive).

9. After 15 minutes, uncover the cookie sheet and, using your fingertip, press “dimples” into the dough every inch or so over its surface.

10. Sprinkle the rosemary and thyme over the dough. Then spread the onions and sprinkle the olive pieces over the dough.

11. Put the cookie sheet on a low rack in the oven and bake for 15 minutes.

12. To serve, cut into long, slender pieces. I made a garlic olive oil dipping sauce which went perfectly with it.

Traveling in Greece: Milos

Since I’ve been to about sixteen thousand “destinations” in Greece, I thought I’d make a regular blog feature out of writing little travel articles about places I’ve been, with photos and recommendations. Who knows, maybe they’ll encourage someone to come check them out 🙂

Today: Milos, a medium-sized island in the Cycladic archipelago (the same one that includes Santorini and Mykonos), which is not very touristy (although it is very busy indeed in August) and is downright frighteningly beautiful.

Why should I go?

Milos is unspoiled, just as beautiful if not more so than the completely spoiled Santorini, has some of the nicest beaches in the country, has an excellent archaeological museum, several good archaeological sites, and a charming capital that’s perfect for wandering.

How do I get there?

Milos has an airport that gets flights from Athens, usually about once per day (Olympic Air).  There are usually several highspeed and slow ferries per day in the summer, and at least one per day in the winter.  All the boats leave from Peiraias harbor.

Where should I stay?

There are three main places to stay:  the port town of Adamantas, the capital town of Plaka and its neighboring Tripiti, and the beach town of Pollonia.  I’d recommend either of the first two, especially Plaka.  Pollonia is far away from everything and although there is a nice beach there, it’s not as beautiful as several of the other beaches.

Adamantas

The port town has lots of restaurants, hotels, cafes, and shops.  Almost all ships dock here, the airport is nearby, and there are taxi stands and buses here in town.  This is probably the easiest place to stay, but it’s not the most beautiful.

Plaka

Plaka is where the archaeological museum, the Early Christian catacombs, the site of Ancient Milos, and lots of good restaurants and shops are located.  It’s also the most beautiful village on the island.  My recommendation for a place to eat is Archontoula, near the bus turn-around.

A street in Plaka.

An old Plaka house.

Archaeological Sites

The most important one, and the one you just can’t miss if you go to Milos, is the Bronze Age site of Phylakopi.   Built of volcanic stone, Phylakopi was the ancient center of obsidian production.  Obsidian (volcanic glass) was the best available material for cutting, so was sold all over the ancient Mediterranean world.  This allowed Phylakopi to develop into an important trading center, and the Archaeological Museum in Plaka has lots of examples of obsidian cutting tools, pottery, figurines, and other finds from the site.  It’s located near the beautiful Papafranga beach, so a visit to the one can easily include the other.

Phylakopi looking toward the sea.

A wall of volcanic stone.

Other important sites include the ancient theater of Milos (below Plaka) and the Early Christian catacombs (nearby).

Museums

There are three museums on the island but I’ve only been to two of them.  I didn’t go to the Ecclesiastical Museum as that’s not really my thing.  The Archaeological Museum in Plaka, though small, is one of the best local museums in the entire country (thanks to the finds from Phylakopi).  In case you’re wondering, it has a plaster cast of the statue of Aphrodite found on the island (the Venus di Milo) which is in the Louvre.

The Milos Minerological Museum in Adamantas is wonderful.  I wasn’t sure what to expect from this museum but it was a great surprise.  There are great teaching exhibitions on the life of miners and on the minerals themselves (the island, being volcanic, is full of them).  When I visited, there was also a great temporary exhibition on shells of the Mediterranean, which is now closed; and there’s a tiny bookstore that has some good stuff in it.

Rock formation in Milos.

Beaches

Milos’ biggest tourist draw is the beaches; they are beautiful… I’m not much of a beach person myself, but I’ll just post some photos from Papafranga to give you an idea.

Rock channel at Papafranga with hidden beach.

The water at Papafranga.

A popular way to get to many of the more remote beaches is by going on a one-day boat trip around the island, which stops at the really spectacular beaches.  This is possible in the summer in good weather (low wind).

When should I go?

The best time to go is May, June, September, and October, which holds true for most of the islands, because in the winter months, many of the hotels and rooms to rent are closed; and in July and August, prices are much, much higher for everything, and there are too many people around.

How much will it cost?

In May, June, September, or October, from Athens, ferry tickets about €15 per person, hotel about €35 for a double room, food about €20 for a restaurant meal for two people.   Four nights on the island, including hotel and ferry tickets and food, for two people, about €300 if you throw a few gyros in there and don’t eat at fancy restaurants twice a day.