Covid lockdown threw a bit of a wrench into the Greek island house hunt, but in early 2021 we began to craft a plan to more seriously tackle the search again. AD and PS were planning a long stay in Greece, including a winter season on Tinos, which would be the perfect experiment to confirm year round living on a Cycladic island was not a crazy idea. Their plans were also convenient as Andros and Tinos were next on our list to investigate, in fact they were the only ones on our list for the 2021 search, with fingers well crossed that one of these would offer the perfect result. They are the next closest islands to Attiki, they are both decently larger (triple the population) than Kea (primary drawback of that first island) and both are reachable from Rafina (still avoiding Pireaus).
We spent countless hours on www.spitogatos.com which, despite its unreliability, at least offered heaps of potential properties as well as the listing agents names. We did try to reach out to realtors in advance, with limited success and, once we arrived on Tinos, quickly discovered that this unresponsiveness was at least in part due to the mad real estate market. Yes, well timed, we are in the Covid-driven race to relocate.
Tinos was lovely in many ways, as JC says, is there any Greek island that is actually undesirable? Well some of us are a bit picker, perhaps. Even though we had arrived in late September, the island had a feeling of busy-ness about it, or perhaps it was exhaustion having barely emerged from the summer rush. At the same time, it is also a religious destination, probably the premier one in all of Greece, having the Evangelistria Church honouring Panagia. This draws mad crowds all the year long, many of them a tad too ardent for my own taste, not that this tarnishes the charm of Tinos town, but it does create mayhem regularly. Yes, Tinos has many beautiful authentic traditional villages, beautiful beaches, lively atmosphere, good food etc., but it has also been very ‘discovered.
When we finally caught up with the king of realtors, he was very illuminated. In spite of his Mercedes SUV and flash sunglasses, he was surprsingly down to earth, had some sensible insights, spoke intelligently about what was happening to Tinos, and had nothing but praise for our architect whom he knew from the restoration project a few years ago. What is happening on Tinos is that it is being overrun, and probably is on the cusp of sustainability failure, simply put, too much load on their strained water, energy and road resources. He did not have much good to say about the lack of control on planning and was of the opinion that Andros would not let it go this way. This was a good finale to our visit, we heard it from the expert, and we were ready for Andros, which is another post for another day.
PS Not to be forgotten, ED was along in being totally enamored by a beautiful though tad (or a lot) decrepit house on the south eastern edge of the island. IE tipped us off and connected us to the son of friend. Beautiful village, the house tucked in the far end, with endless view down through a green valley and into the south eastern Aegean. Heaps of potential, a dream project. It will remain a dream, imagining a world when all these old relics are restored to their glory.
Q4 2021
