Hydra Harbour - Hydra Island Greece
Everyone’s enduring love affair with Hydra starts in the harbour
Your first step off the boat launches your visit to Hydra with the efficiency of a catapult. You’re hurled immediately into an otherworldly existence that’s utterly beguiling.
Everyone’s arrival is a bustling excitement of greetings, happy noises, unfamiliar aromas and bright colours. A sensory overload!
Property managers welcome their guests with beaming smiles. Bags are miraculously (often unnervingly) whisked away. By mule or cart, your luggage will make its way to your accommodation, with or without you.
Within twenty paces you’ll be immersed in social bubbles of conversation and clinking of glasses, the ‘clackerty-clack’ of the yachts moored in the sparkling harbour and the general buzz of fun being had. Everyone feels as though they’ve arrived at a surprise party being held just for them.
As the pace quickens to catch up with the luggage, first-time visitors stop to stare in an attempt to absorb it all. Return visitors will get waylaid by familiar faces and friends.
Welcome one of the most enticing and exciting harbours of all the Greek Islands.
The perfect horseshoe is cradled in the arms of the amphitheatrical mountains that rear up dramatically to the West and East. The houses are piled on top of each other, all looking seaward in a spectacular cascade.
The harbour (or port as it’s also called) is the main focal point of Hydra. This is where you’ll find most of the shops and cafes. It’s where notices of events are posted. Mules for hire stand waiting to take luggage, deliver shopping or offer a quick ride around the town. Water taxis bob on their moorings waiting to speedily take you to your coastal destination. Further along, opposite the clock tower, beach boats wait to take sun-worshippers to the beaches along Hydra’s dramatic coastline.
At any time of the day or night, the harbour’s cafes and restaurants bustle with people who, once they’ve accomplished their morning tasks, stop for coffee, breakfast and a chat to catch up with news and gossip. Everyone faces the sea for never-failing entertainment. Boats, cruisers and yachts of all shapes and sizes come and go. An always moving, glittering theatre!
Saturday and Wednesday mornings are the busiest on the port front because it’s delivery day with the Georgia Supply Ship. Everything from freezers, furniture, plants and pallets of food supplies for the shops, is unloaded right in the centre of the harbour. Trains of mules load up the goods and take the goods to the final destinations.
Hydra’s fishing fleet adds to the morning cacophony. Fishermen sell their catches off the back of their boats to restaurant chefs, Hydra residents and even the occasional visitor who is daring enough to sample one of the odd-looking varieties caught. The fishermen are the harbour cats' best friends and Hydra’s semi-feral feline population regularly dine on Sushi!
The massive town clock dominates the port announcing the hourly and half-hourly passage of time. Its loud bells chivy everyone to their next appointment at the beach or for lunch. And later, the bells chase them up the hill to change for dinner or to go to an exhibition opening party. The chimes are the heartbeat of Hydra Harbour.
The imposing, grand buildings that line the harbour front each have their own story to tell. Many are still owned, generations later, by the families who made such a massive contribution to the success of modern-day Greece during the 1821 Greek War of Independence. And even further back three centuries ago, Hydra’s sea-faring population travelled far and wide bringing great riches to the island. The enormous warehouses of those merchants still line the harbour today. Now, with shops below and residences or hotel accommodation above, Hydra’s proud history is written on every stone.
The top-end, international restaurants and cocktail bars rub shoulders with traditional tavernas and ‘Kafenia’ in a blur of contradictory styles. And of course, as there isn’t a car, bike or moped to be found on Hydra, everyone has to walk regardless of their 'walk-in-life'.
Welcome to Hydra Harbour, the gateway to all the delights to be had on Hydra Island.
Images
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