Cyclades
Dry hills, wind and the empty blue.
The Cyclades are the Greece everyone has in their head: white cubes, blue doors, wind, a sea that looks like this only here. Santorini and Mykonos sold the image. The smaller islands kept it.
Antiparos is a ten-minute ferry from Paros and has decided to stay small: a harbour village with one lane, a Venetian castle, beaches you walk to, and hills with nothing on them but thyme and a few goats. That people who could buy anywhere have been buying houses here for years says something about the island — and the island says nothing about it.
The wind, the meltemi, blows in July and August. Then the Cyclades are loud. Before and after, they are what you imagined.
Antiparos is the Cyclades without the stage set.
We recommend Antiparos to people who did Mykonos once and never again. The Rooster sits above Livadia bay on thirty acres of hillside: 17 suites and houses with private pools, a farm that supplies the restaurant, and a spa that doesn't need the word wellness. It's expensive, and it's the house that makes sense on this island. Come at the end of May or in September. Take the ferry from Piraeus, not the flight — the seven hours are part of it.
