If your
luggage is too heavy to carry up to your room -- or pension, or house -- on the island
of Hedra, the gem of the Saronic Gulf, you hire a donkey. You will not be able
to take a taxi or even a motorcycle (or a tourist bus or even a minivan) because
"all wheeled vehicles" are banned from Hedra. The resulting island ambience
is a unique blend of beauty and pre-industrial silence.
Many places
in Greece are beautiful. Many are also peaceful. Set in the sunny blue water of
the Aegean off of the ancient region known as the Peloponnese, Hedra is
beautiful, peaceful and also quiet. It's a rare place, with enough
international draw that people like Leonard Cohen keep a house there. 
To get
there we took the ferry from the port of
Tolo, a two and a half hour cruise through the Saronic Gulf with islands and
mainland hillsides in view the whole way, passing the isle of Spetses (where we
would also visit on the return trip). The cruise ship was comfortable and
roomy, the sun-worshipers sat on the top deck. We sat on the main deck and
tried to take pictures of the dolphins who lept and dove behind the ship on
two occasions. Mostly I simply got the splash, though one effort (as you see in the second photo down) captured
a bit of tail. 
The island features
a photogenic port, white-walled houses with orange tiled roofs, rows of yachts
and fishing boats, a steep geographic profile rising straight up from the shore,
storefronts and houses built so close to the shoreline you have to assume
there's hardly ever the fear of marine encroachment those of us who live by the
Atlantic learn to call "storm surge."
Despite the
close-at-hand presence of all this ocean, the air is dry, the sunlight
crystalline but soft, the insect life pleasingly absent, and the flowers bright
and long-lasting. In this part of Greece, you always eat outdoors.
Ship-building
(according to the travel guides) in the 18th century led to the island's growth
and development. Hedra was one the Greek Islands that played a significant role
in the Greek independence struggle in the early 19th century, as did Spetses. Admiral
Andreas Miaoulis commanded a Greek fleet when the island contributed 130 ships to
a blockade effort during the war of independence from the Ottoman Empire, 1821-1829.
The island
of Spetses, while also very beautiful, is not so quiet. As if taking advantage
of a pent-up demand for internal combustion engines caused by Hedra's
proscription of motorized vehicles, the chief 'tourist" activity here
appears to be riding motor cycles along the broad shoreline road and threading them through the narrow twisting
lanes, where the four of us traipsed both to escape from their noise and to admire the very white-walled villas with their walled-in
gardens of fruitfiul trees and flowering trees, one of these packed with an almond,
olive and orange tree all finding enough sunshine to go around.
The great
historical figure in Spetses is the 19th century sailor Laskarina Bouboulina,
to whom both a museum and a substantial statue are dedicated. Her biography
(recounted in online sources) was truly that of a swashbuckling heroine. She was
born in a prison in Constantinople of a captive revolutionary father, built a
fortune in maritime trade, raised a Greek flag she designed herself (on a ship
she named, with a sure sense of nation pride, the Agamemnon), and joined forces
with fleets from other islands in the revolt against the Turks.
Here's a
link to the full wikipedia account:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laskarina_Bouboulina
Sailing to
the Greek isles, these two at least, was a long but satisfying day. Odysseus,
we know, had a full ten years of this stuff, with adventures for which the term
"epic" was invented. We were happy to get back to our tourist
apartment with time for a little nap before a superb dinner (prepared by somebody
else).
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