Trips and Tips: Lipsi - A beautiful, picturesque island, with very kind people and amazing, genuine Greek cuisine!

I am going to divide this travel narration into more than one parts, because I have loved this place so much and I want to share this experience in detail with you..

Now, Lipsi is basically a group of islands located in the South Eastern Aegean Sea in Greece, but only one of these islands is inhabited. The travel to this place is a bit tricky... You can either catch a plane to a nearby bigger island, like Leros, Patmos, Kalymnos, Ikaria, Kos, or Rhodes, or you can take a boat to one of these islands and then take the Catamaran to Lipsi; or wait for the only time during the week that the boat starting from Piraeus reaches Lipsi; or you can rent a helicopter! Or, even better, you can go sailing! To tell you the truth, I took the second option as I want to have a means of transportation wherever I go, therefore I took the boat to Kalymnos (this trip lasted 7 hours); I stayed in Kalymnos for 7 hours and then on-boarded to the local Catamaran for another hour trip to Lipsi. The whole travel sounds tiring; but you see, when you leave for your vacation, you are so excited that nothing actually bothers you.

Lipsi has one main village, with 800 inhabitants. During the summer though, it has thousands of Italian tourists! Yes, you read correct! Italians owe approximately 300 houses on the island and I don’t know how many more arrive via sailing and live in their boats! You know, Italians know how to pick well!

The main source of income is agriculture (among other things they produce their own wine and honey), fish, livestock and tourism. People are quite authentic, I would say. They are not affected by modern civilisation that much, even though they have a lot of tourists during the summer. Even the locals that had immigrated to US or Australia, or to other European countries, are still part of a Greece that no longer exists for us who were brought up in Athens. That is why I would recommend a visit.

Isolated as they may be, the lipsian people have everything they need: the best food in the Mediterranean (goats are at their bests there, fresh fish, dairy products – apart from the shepherds’ production, there is also an Italian guy who decided to create a dairy products’ business in Lipsi!), bakeries (there is one bakery in the centre of the village where you may find almost everything: from sweets to cigarettes, alcohol, breakfasts, small presents etc), 1 doctor, 1 pharmacy, 1 library, 1 cultural centre, many churches, a few restaurants, a couple of bars. Don’t ask for the local ticket services guy if you want to buy tickets to other islands…it is too hard to find him! Whenever I wanted to ask something I would call the tourist office of the nearby island, ask for info and buy the ticket once the boat is in front of you and you are rushing to on-board! And why rush anyway? If you lose this boat, another one will come at some point! That is the correct way to take non-anxiety lessons!

Because of the island’s isolation, its high liaison to the sea, its geopolitical position, as well as the authenticity of its inhabitants, the locals have a true and genuine faith to God.

This is why this island has numerous churches and also celebrates so traditionally a very major event, like the Dormition of the Mother of God. There is a graven image of the Mother of God which on the eve of her Celebration, from August 15th until the 23rd, the lilies that during the year are standing in front of the graven image, they blossom -only for the few days of the celebrations. And this happens every year.

This small island has a few beaches that cover all tastes: they can be trendy, they can be tranquil, they can be rocky or sandy. Whatever you want, you can have it! My favorite one was Xerokambos beach. Actually in this part of the island there are three beaches, the one next to the other. Tourkomnima, a small one I am afraid don’t know the name and Xerokambos:

We even dove and caught some sea urchins which we ate with a few drops of lemon! Ummm!

A taste of happiness!