This time last year, over lunch, a stylish magazine editor goaded me into booking a trip to Milos. “If you wait any longer, it’ll be too late,” she said.. “It likely already is.” And in a way, she was right. What was once a largely undiscovered trove of more than 70 beaches at the southernmost point of the windblown Cyclades, has recently been anointed the island.
Thankfully, Milos isn’t easy to reach from the mainland port city of Piraeus; it’s much more convenient to choose, say, Hydra, where, in less time than it takes to watch "Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again," boatloads of well-heeled travelers can find themselves elbowing Peaches or Phoebe Philo for a table at the taverna. By comparison, in Milos, which is about four hours by ferry from Athens, you’re still, at least for now, more likely to be overwhelmed by stray cats than fellow tourists. (The island is most well known as the site where the Venus de Milo was discovered in 1820.)
And yet, the journey is part of the fun: as one of the world’s great ancient cities recedes into memory, the Aegean Sea begins to extend so seamlessly into the sky that it awakens an escape fantasy — the weightless sense that you’ve been absorbed, maybe forever, into a fizzy, neon cerulean cloud.
And then Milos appears. Against a range of scrubby volcanic mountains and sunbaked rock formations in the sleepy fishing village of Klima sits a long row of whitewashed boat houses with brightly colored doors. At least a few of them are available to rent; while not fancy, there’s something priceless about indulging life as a mariner at the end of the world. At dusk, from the kitchen of the town’s only restaurant, Astakas,the aroma of grilled octopus and shrimp saganaki, often served alongside locally grown vegetables and paired with homemade tsipouro, flavors the already salty ocean air.
The best place to spend the night, Skinopi Lodge is just 10 minutes away on a dusty dirt road accessible by a four-wheel-drive vehicle. Owned and run by Nausika Georgiadou, the eco-friendly retreat, redolent of the olive trees and bushes of lavender she grows on the property, has become a cliffside sanctuary for the fashion set. Inspired by the nearby fishermen’s houses, each of the hideaway’s seven airy, stone-built villas, elegantly spare and rendered in calming shades of gray and white, lead down a walking path to a private swimming area.
“You must take a boat tour around the island,” says Georgiadou, who fell in love with Milos on her first visit three decades ago. (Many of the island’s famed beaches are only accessible by boat.) She recommends sailing to Kleftiko, a rocky beach on the island’s southern shore, and swimming inside Sykia, a cavernous sea cave with a naturally formed ceiling aperture that lets in rapturous spikes of light like a James Turrell Skyspace. Afterward, she suggests a day of sunbathing on the uninhabited island of Poliegos — named after the many wild goats who live there among increasingly rare Mediterranean monk seals — followed by dinner on the beach in Kimolos. “Chase the sunset home,” she says. “The magic happens when the dolphins join in.” If Skinopi is booked, a romantic alternative is Volcano Luxury Suites, a hilltop hotel near the sulfur fumaroles of Paleochori Beach with six apartments equipped with ocean-fronting hot tubs and Hermès amenities.
It's difficult to picture some of the beaches on Milos without having seen them; the imagination can only dream so big. For example, Sarakiniko, an undulating landscape of bone-white volcanic rock and sand, recalls the surface of the moon, which when on a recent visit was crowded with teenagers with boomboxes spend all day blaring songs by The Psychedelic Furs. Meanwhile, the secluded and serene Tsigrado Beach, which can only be experienced by climbing a cliff via ropes and ladders, boasts colors rarely seen outside of a Slim Aarons photograph. Similarly, Kastanas, past sulphur mines on a winding gravel path far from any villages or main roads (probably why it’s one of the region’s only nudist beaches), has psychedelic rock formations in vibrant shades of scorched red and pink.
Although it’s worth considering a 30-minute boat ride to Sifnos, arguably the Cyclades’ tastiest island, Milos boasts a few memorable restaurants. In the town of Pollonia, run by a local family of honey purveyors since 1957, the café and shop Kivotos ton Gefseon serves homemade baklava and galaktoboureko in a spacious courtyard whose bougainvillea-heavy pergola provides one of the area’s great extravagances: shade. For breakfast, try the watermelon pie, a local specialty served cold and topped with nuts or raisins.
Two of the frontrunners for best dinner couldn’t be more different: in the picturesque seaside village of Mandrakia, situated among clusters of jewel-toned boat houses, the popular Medusa offers laidback taverna-style dining with reliably delicious Greek classics: oil-soaked anchovies, thick-cut swordfish steaks and smoky mackerel; further inland, the menu at OKTO, opened in 2021 by a pair of chefs from Michelin-starred restaurants, Nikolaos Chatzipantelidis and Jisun Sung, attracts diners with adventurous palettes to sample dishes such as shrimp tartare with melon soup, seabass carpaccio with an avocado puree and pappardelle with mushrooms, truffle oil and local cheeses. Sung, a celebrated pastry chef, makes panna cotta with apricot that tastes like the bittersweet end to a long, languid day in the sun.
