Renting a Month of Heaven on Isle of Hydra

It’s a perfect place if you want to stop the world and get off for a few weeks. Especially with kids. Kids make great international travelers.

We discovered that years ago, when we first took our daughter, then 6 months, around the world. Since then we’ve traveled many times en famille , first as a threesome, then as a foursome.

Last spring my husband and I were happily drawing up plans for yet another idyllic family vacation abroad. A whole month on Hydra, an island off the Greek Peloponnesus coast not far south of Athens. But then a terrorist bomb blew a child out of a window of a TWA flight to Athens.

I’d coexisted for a couple of years in London with the IRA and thought nothing of it. My husband had been in Vietnam. No way Kadafi was going to stop us. But was it really fair, we asked ourselves, to take kids right into the middle of the “lion’s den”?

Son Dilan and his friend Deagan (both age 11), who was coming with us on the trip, solved that. At a family conference they calmly announced statistics that proved we had more chance of being struck by lightning than being blown up by Kadafi. Well, by Zeus, if the kids had no worries . . . .

Besides, even though we by no means qualify for “Life Styles of the Rich and Famous,” we’ve become addicted to our vacations abroad, at least every two years. How are we able to afford it, a middle-class family in the ‘80s?

Rent-Free Vacation

Air fares are our only major expense. By renting our house in Seattle and one in Europe for a similar amount, we can vacation “rent-free.”

We check newspapers, bulletin boards, university housing offices, international trade bureaus, embassies and consulates for people who want temporary housing.

Once in Europe, our family lives on what our daily budget is at home. It’s still cheaper to live in some Mediterranean countries than in the United States, especially when you have your own kitchen and don’t have to buy every meal out.

We usually have ample funds left over to dine out at least three times a week.

If you live near a university campus or within reasonable reach of the sea, a summer rental should be easy to arrange in Los Angeles. Rents are higher there than in Seattle. You could even make a profit after you’ve paid for your villa for the month.

How to find rental houses in other countries? It’s profitable to do your own sleuthing. You cut out the middle-man fees.

We came across our villa on Hydra in the International Herald Tribune (back issues are often available in public libraries).

Equally good sources: the London Sunday Times and Sunday Telegraph. Europeans advertise their country houses and apartments in April and May for the following summer.

Or you can find realtors in the country you want to visit by calling a travel agency near you that specializes in that area.

You can also place your own advertisement in the English-speaking newspaper of that country. In our case, that was the Athens News. Embassies or consulates will provide names and addresses. Or if you happen to get a sympathetic operator, the Athens telephone directory.

On Hydra these people have luxury villas for rent: Tili Touloumtzoglou, P.O. Box 66, Hydra, Greece 10840; Valerie Papoutsis, P.O. Box 23, Hydra, Greece 10840, and John Gavalas, Pan Travel, Hydra, Greece 10840.

For big families or groups who want more authentically Greek digs, try Didy Holland-Martin, Sunnybank, Overbury, Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, England, phone Overbury 370, and/or Mrs. Roxane Sedgwick (our landlady), 15 Karneadou, Athens, Greece 10675.

The villa we chose was 200 years old. It had four bedrooms sleeping eight. Two bathrooms, a dining room, a rooftop terrace. On the second floor a large, vaulted sitting-room opened to a crow’s-nest balcony with a royal view over the port. My husband nicknamed it “the perch” and went there with a cool drink whenever the going got tough.

Downstairs was an inner courtyard with potted gardenias, bougainvillea, jasmine and lemon trees.

Our landlady-to-be sent pictures of the interior of the house. Quaint and funky. Old antiques, pretty glass lamps and books. Flokati rugs on burnished wood floors.

$1,200 Rent

But we really didn’t know what we were getting for our $1,200 until we walked through a great door in a 12-foot, whitewashed stucco wall. Heaven. That night we sat on our rooftop terrace, awash in stars. Below, Hydra lights.

After chilly Seattle evenings the kids were agog at the warmth and made profound campfire statements: “Gee, I could really live here, if only I could speak the language,” and, having been atop the Acropolis that morning: “Guess maybe old things can be beautiful, too.”

From high up somewhere, a bell tolled. The noise tumbled down the mountain deep into our psyches, then just as suddenly was gone.

Utter peace. On Hydra, automobiles are banned. Everyone walks except the three garbage collectors.

After its demise in the mid-19th Century from a rich trading economy--due to the economic inability of the Hydriote fleet to convert to steam--Hydra remained untouched until the 1950s. The population dropped from 28,000 to 4,000.

After World War II, Westerners came. Artists, writers, then tourists. With tourism, Hydra’s sagging economy revived.

Visitors will find an island whose inhabitants have carefully preserved its beauty and architectural authenticity, not just gone all out on a tourist building binge. You cannot, for instance, build new structures on Hydra wherever you please. You can build only on top of a ruin.

Naught to do on this rock in the middle of an azure sea but get down and be dazzled by the sun.

Swim. (There are no sand beaches, just smooth rocks jutting into a clear, deep sea.) Stare off into the blue for hours. Fantasize.

Paint pictures of a thousand quaint scenes. Green leaves, black grapes dripping over the edge of a whitewashed wall. Stay free if you’re an artist and have the right credentials. Home will be the magnificent Tombazis archontika (mansion), now the Polytechnic School of Fine Arts.

Take a hike to the top of the mountain to the Convent of Agia Efpraxia. The nuns will treat you to tea, perhaps send you home with some exquisite lace doilies.

Crowd watch. Culture watch. Make fascinating foreign friends. (Remember, this is an island. You always bump into everyone, unless you choose otherwise.)

Accept the invitation to visit the luxury yacht of that Greek admiral’s wife you met swimming at the rocks yesterday. Go to the hip cocktail party of the London futures broker in his mansion high on the hill.

Eat what you like at Lebessisis restaurant above the cliffs at Vlichos. Dance it off under the moon at Disco Cavos high on the cliffs above town. Then cool down with a nude dive into velvety depths.

Scuba diving is not allowed because of the antiquities underwater that you may be tempted to smuggle out of the country. But you can snorkel to your heart’s delight. Or take a boat seven miles across the sea to the Peloponnesus coast.

Completely Safe

All this while you rest secure; the island is completely safe for kids. There’s virtually no crime on Hydra. Our kids were able to wander at will. They matured a lot just being able to practice autonomy in a smaller, more controllable world. And praise the gods, no TV.

One evening, as they snoozed in their deck chairs, my husband and I sat in the dark, sipping delicious American coffee, six pounds of which I dragged all the way from home. Along with games, cards, books, film, 10 boxes of fruitie loops, five bags of raisin bran, four pounds of peanut butter and a sun umbrella.

Be warned. None of the above is easily or cheaply obtained in Greece. Bring them. (We have a saying in this family: When the cereal and the peanut butter run out, we go home.)

A fat old moon heaved itself over the mountain and sailed right over our heads. The night cicadas hummed the world to sleep. A cock crowed.

Hey, we made it to paradise despite all the brouhaha! Eat your heart out, Kadafi and Co.!

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Touloumtzoglou has large, luxurious, modern villas and apartments sleeping up to eight for from $1,500 to $3,000 plus a month. Some have swimming pools. She owns Loulaki, an art gallery and boutique that stocks some of the finest work of Greek artisans today. Her family also owns the Loulaki Cafe, a favorite watering place for Hydra’s foreign residents.

Papoutsis has a beautiful modern house that sleeps six, overlooking the whole of Hydra, for $2,000 a month. Also a more pedestrian apartment that has the advantage of being in town near the waterfront. About $1,000 a month, or by the week.

Our landlady’s charming old villa, sleeping up to eight, rents for $1,200 a month, $900 in the off-season--after June and before September. (Many rentals are cheaper in the off-season, some by up to half.)

Gavalas is a realtor on the island and also the owner of Pan Travel, the only travel agency. Houses and apartments from $1,500 a month to more than $3,000, half that in the off-season.

Holland-Martin is a charming British psychoanalyst who has been coming to the island for 30 years. Her house is high on the hill, old and spacious with a beautiful garden. It sleeps up to seven and would be perfect for a large, rambunctious family who want to holiday on the Greek Riviera but do not have a lot of money and don’t crave luxury. A bargain at $800 a month. Or by the week.

John Nayakozmithou has a new luxury two-bedroom apartment under his residence, a 10-minute climb from the port. Sleeps four, $50 a day in high-season, $40 in the off.

Bank Travel, 32 Omirou St., Athens, Greece 10672, has a villa at Mandraki, a 20-minute walk from the port or a 10-minute boat ride. Rents for about $1,400 a month, sleeps eight. Many listings for other islands in the Aegean, not just Hydra.

If you want to avoid housework, 500 drachmas an hour (about 135 drachmas to the dollar) will get you out of all but the most perfunctory.

Hydra is 90 minutes from Piraeus by hydrofoil (about $11 one way for adults, half for kids under 11); four hours by slow boat but half the price.

Restaurants have marvelous Greek fare-- souvlakia with lamb, beef or fish, Greek salads, tarama, moussaka, wine . . . outdoors under the stars for as little as $6 a person. Unfortunately, except for red snapper, squid, octopus and swordfish, there was a lack of fish. Our favorites, the Garden, the Brothers Three, Taverna Douskos and La Grenouille, a bit more expensive. English-style fish and chips served at two fast-food restaurants.

No American Express office, but National Bank will cash personal checks with your Visa or MasterCard.

One of the joys of Hydra is its proximity to Athens and the rest of Greece. We took a two-day camping excursion to the summer festival of Greek classics at the ancient amphitheater at Epidaurus. A stuning production, which kept even the 11-year-olds rapt: Aristophanes’ “The Frogs.” (Camping is not allowed in Greece, but people do it anyway.)

Athens Festival

The annual Athens Festival is held during July and August. You can go back and forth during your stay on Hydra. Or take in an event on your arrival or departure from Athens. (Tickets are often obtainable on the night of an event at 7 p.m. at the box office.) One of our great thrills was hearing the Moscow Philharmonic perform in Herod Atticus amphitheater at the side of the floodlit Acropolis the night before we left for home.

Transportation on Hydra: Foot or mule. Baggage can be transported up stairs on mules for about 200 drachmas a bag.

For additional information, contact the Greek National Tourist Organization, 611 West 6th St., Suite 1998, Los Angeles 90017; phone (213) 626-6696.

For all other information about Hydra: Ask for Jimmy Kiriakakis down at the cafe on the port. He’s hard to miss.