Feature Image: Pothia Harbor, Kalymnos

My first trip to Greece

I’m a Greece virgin. Not to be confused with a Greek virgin—one of those chaste girls sacrificed to the gods in previous eras. No, I’d never been to Greece before this day trip to Kalymnos. How is that possible?

We bought our house in Turkey over 12 years ago, and despite Kos only being a 15 minute ferry ride away, we’d never gone on so much as a day trip. In fact I’d never stepped foot on Greek soil before. I didn’t have an aversion to the country, there had always just been other countries higher on the list, and Greece never seemed to bubble to the top.

Last year, the lessor known and more expensive ferry company Yesil Marmaris ran an off 99 Euros for unlimited travel between Turkey and the neighboring Greek Islands in the Dodecanese chain from April to October. This was a steal, because after only a couple of day trips we’d more than made our money back. So everything after then was a free trip (as long as you discount the Euros we spent of blocks of Greek feta cheese, and the money spent in the duty free shop on the way back into Turkey!) Seeing it from that perspective, free is loose term used for justification purposes only.

But 2019 was its year, and the cheap ferry season ticket was an excellent motivator to make the most of the islands we can see from our neighbourhood in Turkey. I’d always thought that my first trip would be with Red, but he was busy supervising the construction work in progress on the garden, so I went with a fellow expat who lives in the same neighborhood.

Turgutreis Ferry Port (Turkey)

So after a lifetime of never being to Greece, my first trip was a girls trips to the island of Kalymnos. Yesil Marmaris runs ferry routes out of Bodrum and Turgutreis, and although Bodrum has more routes and services, Turgutreis is our closest port and it’s closer to Kos, Kalymnos, and Leros than Bodrum, so it’s a convenient port for us. They have a weekly service going to Kalymnos and Leros, and a daily service to Kos.

As this was my first trip to Greece I was really excited, and so we got to the port early and there weren’t any lines at the ticket office or to go through immigration.

After spending the next few months hopping over to different Greek islands from the Turgutreis and Bodrum ferry terminals we’ve come to appreciate what a welcome sight this lack of people is. During the peak summer months (June, July, August) the lines can be brutal because there’s multiple ferry company departures all leaving at the same time, and the immigration hall is compact with only 3 immigration officers on duty.

Getting to the terminal early is a pain, because it means a lot of hanging around. And if you get there too early, they immigration hall won’t be open and you have to line up in the heat. Even at 8am in the morning, Turkey weather can be brutal in July and August. So it’s a balancing act to time your arrival. All this was a learning curve that we never seemed to get quite right, except for this first day trip to Kalymnos.

Arriving in Kalymnos (Greece)

It takes about an hour to reach Kalymnos from Turgutreis, and you pass the small island of Pserimos, and Kos is large and in charge in the background.

The ferry approaches Kalymnos from the East, and navigates a swath of barren landscape before turning into the main port town of Pothia. If I’d had any preconceived impressions of what a Greek island would look like, this was it.

Clusters are buildings and boats hug the harbor, protected on all sides with a sloping arid landscape. A quintessential white and blue Greek church perches on a plateau watching over the town, and the Greek flag painted on the rocks welcomes me to Greece for the first time. On the opposite hillside, a monastery and off-white cross looms conspicuously over the town.

The hillsides and these religious icons, feel like nurturing arms have been placed around Pothia. We haven’t even stepped off the ferry yet and already I’m feeling protected. This was going to be a good day trip.

While the other passengers started to filtered down the gangplank, we stayed at the back of the boat to capture the moment of my first time in Greece.

I was surprised with with the picturesque look and feel of this Kalymnos. In my head an iconic Greek island is the white and blue buildings of Santorini, and the diversity of the muted tones of the buildings in Pothia surprised me.

Over on our Turkish coastline, the majority of building are white with blue painted around doors and windows, so I just assumed it’d be the same here. So when I was greeted with multiple colored buildings here in Kalymnos, it induced a fevered photo session to capture my first impressions.

I wished I’d got off the ferry when I took this picture, because the line to the immigration hall was short.

But by the time I got off the boat the line looked like this, and it took nearly an hour to get through Kalymnos immigration.

As it was early in the season (8th June 2019) there was only one immigration desk open, but later in the season there’s two desks open: an EU and non-EU line.

On subsequent trips to the Greek Islands we soon learnt that it was best to line up to leave the ferry, even before it had docked so that we could get to the beginning of the EU line and get through immigration within minutes. The longer you dawdle, the longer it’s going to take to actually start your day trip, and when you only have a limited time available, every minute counts. This was the strategy we embraced on all future trips, but didn’t help us on this day.

Kalymnos was our learning curve—an hour in the blazing sun when it’s your first time in Greece is unbearable. We didn’t want to miss the next bust to the beach town of Myrties, where we were planning on finding a lunch spot overlooking the ocean.

All we could do was shift from foot to foot, and sigh heavily when the line slowed down to a molasses crawl.

We eventually made it through immigration and rushed to the end of the jetty to find the bus timetable. We’d missed the 11am to Myrties by 6 minutes, and had 90 minutes to wait for the next one at 12:30.

What’s a girl to do?

We popped into the Sponge shops to chat with one of the locals about the sponge diving history of this island.

Then walked around the harbour in search of a little taverna to enjoy a glass in the sunshine, that had a picturesque and typically Greek harbour view.

There’s worse places to sit until it’s time to catch our bus to Myrties beach.

Off to Lunch in Myrties

The bus left on time and took half an hour, and when we got to the sleepy beach town of Myrties, we only found one potential place overlooking the beach to have lunch.

We had a little paddle, but we really didn’t have time to waste because we have about 90 minutes before the but would take us back to Pothia, and we couldn’t miss it, or else we’d miss our ferry. So we headed for the shade of a our ocean-front restaurant.

Time for a jug of wine to wash down the view, and order the lunch special—a Greek Salad and grilled fish.

The relaxed atmosphere of the restaurant (read: slow slow service), meant that we had to suffer down our food, and pour the remnants of the wine jug into our water bottles before we ran back up the hill to catch our bus back to Pothia.

Wandering the Back Streets of Pothia

We had time to kill before our ferry departed, so we wandered around the cobbled back streets of town. I think this hair salon is sailing quite close to the trademark wind by using this familiar font for their signage! But love it.

There was just enough time to explore the little fishing boat harbor, before rushing back through town to catch our ferry.

It was a memorable first trip to Greece, and I was sad that it had to come to an end so quickly. As far as Greek Islands go, Kalymnos is a keeper, and I couldn’t wait to come back with Red and show him my new Greek discovery.

And return to stock up on a few British treats.

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I can’t believe it took me until 2019 to tread on Greek soil, especially since it’s only a 15 minute ferry ride from our nearest Turkish ferry port! Well I’m making up for lost time, and here’s my blog posts about exploring Greece:

• Popping my Greek Cherry with Kalymnos
• Day trip to Vathy on the Greek Island of Kalymnos
• Catching the Mastichari Ferry from Kos to Kalymnos
• Getting to know Kalymnos Beaches
• Discover the Tranquility of Telendos
• Visiting Symi for their Famous Red Shrimp
• Exploring Leros on Two Wheels

And coming soon:

• Overnight Trip to Symi
• Afternoon in Rhodes

This is a lockdown catch up post, for a trip I took to Kalymnos in June of 2019.