October 2021
As the pandemic began to ease a bit in 2021, we decided we had to get to Greece and get serious about finding a house, the loss of time giving a heightened sense of urgency to the project. That, and like everyone else, probably no longer willing to leave things to ‘later’ – what other random event like a pandemic could possibly befall us all? (little did we know that a couple of years later would bring Ukraine’s invasion by Russia, and Israel-Hamas blow out, and global economic crises, etc. but that’s another story). Point being, time to get moving, find something, move it and do it.
Having agreed Kea wasn’t the right island, but that the Cycladics were still the right island group, the next steps were naturally Andros and Tinos. Meanwhile, D and P planned a long stay, six months over the winter, in Greece and it was natural to choose one of these two for that experiment. Simply by luck of rental connections, they ended up on Tinos, but I reckon that is close enough of a living experiment. Everyone says one should not buy a house or property in Greece without having first actually lived there or at least spent substantial amount of time there, sound advice that we did not follow. For the record, it is still good advice I would give anyone, but honestly I don’t know when J and and I would have been able to do this, and so we were grateful that at least our two partners did. Said experiment went very well, despite contracting Covid from huddling in the local kafenio during a snow blizzard.
But before the TInos experiment, and before even going to Tinos, we landed on Andros, staying at a pair of houses in Alikandro, just above the ancient town of Ypsili, with that wide open Aegean view. This fabulous view also comes with impressive wind exposure, so it was good to have a taste of that as well. We covered a lot of the island that week, connected with a couple of realtors (with great difficulty), saw a few houses and met some characters. We chased down leads off Spitogatos and pulling over at likely looking ‘for sale’ signs if a piece of land or house likely looking. One such random pull over in Ano Aprovato led to a long chat with a friendly elderly lady who had been left in Covid isolation for more than a year, her son in Athens too worried to have her leave or visited. She came out to greet us when we pulled alongside, very chatty and friendly, and shared all kinds of information and gossip that had little to add to understanding the house itself. Like so many properties, it was oddly isolated between other plots they owned with no apparent independent access.
Our favourite house viewing was at the house of an older gentleman we nicknamed Dog Man, what a hoot he was, regaling us with long stories about his family (and how they no longer want to come to this vacation house) and his sailing adventures (all over the eastern Aegean, many solo), his love of dogs (we met a couple of them), and his souvla parties. We also met Niko, the scion of one of the local developers who showed as a couple of properties and a couple of houses they’d built. Our favourite was the Garden, a large 9 stremmata west facing plot just south of Batsi. It really was lovely, spectacular views, good road access right to the fence line. We put in an offer, and were choked when we got scooped. Really disappointing because we no runner up, no back up plan. We spent the entire week pounding the pavement, and came up with nothing more, which did begin to worry us. Despite the endless listings on Spitogatos and the ‘poleite’ signs all over the island, not much was real or if it was, just did not feel right. The houses were never quite suitable (too small, or too big, or too odd, or too dodgy), and it became increasingly likely we’d end up with a property, if even we could be that lucky to find something attractive, and suitable, and buildable, and affordable, and so on.
Overall however, the Andros visit was a success. We loved its diversity and atmosphere, its greenness and hilliness, we found some amazing beach locations, the people were all friendly, the atmosphere was low key but lively enough, the towns were attractive and ‘real’. The northern part of the island had higher hilly areas that reminded me of Scotland of all places, while the inland stretch between the west side and Chora reminded me of Tuscany with its valleys and vales covered with cypresses and pines and scattered with houses in the hillsides. I thought these comparisons were solely my imagination, but later found a travel article that drew the very same observations. Love the idea of being reminded of two such favourite locations, as well as of our home of course.
We managed to track down and speak with a couple of contractors, including Alexandra, Niko’s mother, Valmas, the construction conglomerate on the island (concrete plant, and all), and Psarras construction another family business in Chora. Invaluable to talk through the practicalities of island construction, every conversation was a learning experience, and it became evident just how busy the island was getting. The growing attraction of Andros as a holiday home destination echoed what we saw on Tinos and, just like Tinos was feared to be fast becoming the next Mykonos, fears were emerging that Andros would be next. As it turned out, we failed to find anything on either Andros or Tinos in these two jam-packed weeks. However, we left A and P on Tinos to experience the winter reality, and we all agreed amongst ourselves that Andros came out ahead of Tinos in the island popularity contest. We agreed there was no point looking at further islands and now we just needed a plan to actually take the next steps on Andros, in the shoes of A and P who would carry that torch forward as temporary locals. As it happened, the next steps didn’t take that long to arrive at a purchase, but that is a story for another day…
