Rough Guides - The Rough Guide to the Greek Islands (Travel Guide eBook)

This Rough Guide is one of a new generation of informative and easy-to-use travel-guide ebooks that guarantees you make the most of your trip. An essential tool for pre-trip planning, it also makes a great travel companion when youre on the road.

From the section.

Detailed area maps feature in the guide chapters and are also listed in the , accessible from the table of contents. Depending on your hardware, you can double-tap on the maps to see larger-scale versions, or select different scales. The screen-lock function on your device is recommended when viewing enlarged maps. Make sure you have the latest software updates, too.

Throughout the guide, weve flagged up our favourite places a perfectly sited hotel, an atmospheric caf, a special restaurant with the icon . You can select your own favourites and create a personalized itinerary by bookmarking the sights, venues and activities that are of interest, giving you the quickest possible access to everything youll need for your time away.

Blos Bay, Crete

It would take a lifetime of island-hopping to fully appreciate the 227 inhabited Greek islands scattered across the Aegean and Ionian seas. With sapphire water lapping at rocky coastlines sprinkled with secret coves and sandy beaches, they are the stuff of dreamy travel posters, the very definition of the eulogized Greek summer of sun, sea and sand. Easy as it is to wax lyrical in general terms, however, the islands are by no means a homogeneous holiday cluster no Bahamas or Seychelles here. Each one has its distinctive personality, architecture and flora as well as its own loyal tourist base.

The sea, surprisingly unpolluted and beautifully clear, is undoubtedly the major selling point: as well as offering gorgeous swimming, there are watersports galore, from snorkelling and kayaking to banana boating and windsurfing indeed, the Greek islands are home to some of the best windsurfing spots in the world. Yacht charter, whether bare-boat or skippered, is big business, particularly out of Rhodes, Klymnos, Kos, Lefkda, Pros and Pires. When the sea is less welcoming during the spring and winter months and the crowds have abated a little, theres plenty of land-based activity including walking through lush, wild flower-strewn meadows, hiking and rock climbing to enjoy.

But the islands are far from simply good-looking outdoor playgrounds: like the rest of Greece, they exude a colossal sense of history, sheltering vestiges of occupying foreign forces. Romans, Arabs, Byzantines, Genoese, Venetians, French, British, Italians and Ottomans have all controlled different islands since the time of Alexander the Great, and countless monuments have been left behind by these waves of power: frescoed Byzantine churches, fortified Venetian towns, conventional castles built by the Genoese and Knights of St John, Ottoman mosques and the Art Deco edifices of the interwar Dodecanese Italian administration make up this historical patchwork. Couple these with the lovely cities and temples of ancient Greece itself and the fascinating jumble is complete.

The biggest surprise for the first-time visitor at least is the ecologically sensitive absorption of mass tourism, from the untainted beaches to the traditional, still inhabited, inland capitals. Of course, there are overblown resorts, tavernas aplenty, sophisticated bars and clubs, even the obligatory Irish pub. But, with a few loutish exceptions, the sense of history, accompanied by stringent planning regulations, has ensured that life on the islands more or less appears as it has for centuries. This still holds true in the second decade of the tumultuous debt-ridden twenty-first century, when Greeces economic crisis has been exacerbated by a cataclysmic influx of refugees for which the country was ill-prepared. The islands affected were few, however mainly Lsvos, Hos, Smos and Kos and, by all accounts, the islanders have weathered these challenges with characteristic grace and humanity.

Windmill, os