Journey 01 · Greece
White Buildings, Blue Water
Three islands, one ferry timetable
Published 27 Jun 2025 · Travelled 2–12 Jun 2025
- 9 moments
- 11 days
- 160 km
- Summer
- Greece
- 28mm · f/8 · 1/1000
- 37.0500° N, 25.1500° E
- Aegean Sea, off Paros
- 11:20
- 26°C, clear, meltemi later
Five hours from Piraeus on the car deck's upper rail. The sea stayed flat and the light stayed hard. Good conditions for thinking about nothing.
- 28mm · f/5.6 · 1/500
- 37.1103° N, 25.3720° E
- Portara causeway, Naxos
- 20:10
- 25°C, warm, gold
At dusk the whole town walks out on the causeway to watch the sun go down through a doorway built for a temple that was never finished. Twenty-five centuries of incomplete, and it's the most useful ruin in Greece. Everyone gets their photograph. The door doesn't mind.
- 28mm · f/4 · 1/640
- 37.1063° N, 25.3757° E
- Kastro, Naxos Town
- 10:40
- 27°C, bright
The old town is a defence system pretending to be charming. Lanes narrow until strangers negotiate. Two women ahead of me solved it without breaking conversation. I stayed three steps back and let the walls do the composition.
28mm is exactly the width of a naxos lane. someone should tell leica.
- 28mm · f/2.8 · 1/250
- 37.1069° N, 25.3733° E
- Naxos harbourfront
- 09:05
- 26°C
The fish shop opens when the boats come in and closes when the ice gives up. Everything on the slab was swimming this morning. The owner weighed a red mullet like evidence.
The plate · Agia Anna, Naxos · 14:00 · 30°C, hot
Lunch, four feet from the tide
Prawns, lemon, a glass of something cold going warm too fast. The table legs stood in sand. Nothing about this needed improving, so I took one frame and ate.
- 28mm · f/8 · 1/1250
- 36.7514° N, 24.5148° E
- Sarakiniko, Milos
- 08:15
- 28°C, already hot
Volcanic ash compacted into something between stone and paper, no soil, no shade, no colour except blue. One man stood at the edge working out the physics. The place photographs like the moon with better weather.
- 28mm · f/5.6 · 1/1000
- 36.7529° N, 24.5171° E
- Sarakiniko coast, Milos
- 09:00
- 29°C, still
Around the headland the rock folds into caves and the water goes a blue that looks lit from below. A swimmer went in ahead of me and shrank to a comma. Scale is the only subject here.
Overheard · Adamas port, Milos · 16:40
"The boat comes when it comes. You are on an island. Where is it you think you need to be?" He refilled my coffee without being asked and charged me for one.
- Chora, Folegandros
- 20:35
- 24°C, clear
- Last frame
The smallest island kept the best evening. Cliffs, one path, the sun going down the way it has arranged with the sea. I put the camera away after this frame. Some percentage of every trip should stay unphotographed; I'm still negotiating the percentage.
- 28mm · f/8 · 1/250
- 36.6262° N, 24.9187° E
The route
9 stops
Journey completed
Eleven days, nine stories
- Distance walked
- 84 km
- Frames exposed
- 620
- Ferries
- 5
- Ferries on time
- 2
- Shades of white counted, Naxos alone
- lost count at 30
- Favourite moment
- Sarakiniko at eight in the morning, one swimmer, no sound
- Best food
- Grilled octopus at a table close enough to the water to lose a napkin to it
