After our trip about the Peleponnese, we headed to Kythera island.

Kicking back in Kythera

Kythera is the island which hangs off the bottom (that sounds gross!) of the Peleponnese, and while officially an Ionian Island (along with Zakynthos, Ithaki, Rhodes and Corfu), it really sits alone, between the Ionian and the Aegean seas. It shares much of the Aegean architecture, think white cubist boxes with blue doors, with remants of its Venetian history. Inhabited from the Neolithic age, Kythera has sat the the crossroads of Mediterraen cultures; seeing the Minoans, Phoenicians, Myceneans, Spartans, Athenians, Macedonians, Romans, Byzantines, Venetians, Turks (but only for 3 years!), Russians and English. It joined the United States of the Ionian Islands in 1815, and formally joined Greece is 1864. The notorius pirate Barbarossa visited in 1537, and according to my tourist brochure, the capital was ‘bathed in blood’. Nice.

My gorgeous cousins leant us their family holiday house, so we had a great base just a few minutes walk to a beach, and after travelling each day or two, we all enjoyed having a place to come home to each night, after a hectic day of swimming! Kythera has more than 25 beaches, so we weren’t at a loss for what to do. Kythera is not one of the glamour islands, like Santorini or Mykonos, and there is a quiet agrarian life here, beyond the tourist industry. This, with the family connection, suits our sensibilities.

And it wasn’t just swimming in the aquamarine water, there was a whole lot this too…

And if you want an action replay…

Extraordinarily, for me, is that my grandparents left Kythera nearly 100 years ago, in the 1920s. There were part of the first wave of Mediterrean migration to Australia, 30 years  before the great migration following World War 2. And even more extraordinary, is that during a lifetime in Australia (my grandmother lived for 75 years in Australia), they never returned to Greece. And yet, they were so ‘Greek’. My grandfather left in his late teens, becoming the Australian ‘father’ to his siblings who followed, leaving his parents and 1 brother in Kythera. My grandmother emigrated when she was about 21, with her brother and father. They never saw their families in Greece again.

How blessed we are, to be able to travel the world…