About an hour from Milos by boat, Serifos offers an incredible rolling landscape dotted with bunches of homes shaped like sugar cubes. Here, the laidback energy of the island exudes a lived-in quality, as if each perfect day were in fact an extension of the one that came before it, and the one that will no one doubt follow. “Serifos is about the simple pleasures of life: unparalleled natural beauty; deliciously prepared meals enjoyed around a table with friends and family; nights spent in the town square listening to Greek music, sipping raki and losing track of time,” says Alexia Sheinman, who has been coming with her family since she was a kid. A co-founder of DNA Hospitality Group with her childhood friend Dino Alexakis, Sheinman is developing a hotel on the island, a project born of their shared desire to “give something back to a place which has given so much to us,” she says.
Until it opens, there are two delightful eco-friendly lodging choices: Coco-Mat, a complex of renovated 19th-century miners’ houses, courtesy of the natural mattress manufacturer, overlooking the sandy expanse of Vagia Beach, which is on the southern side of the island. Pénde Serifos is where traditional cottages have been repurposed into ruggedly elegant residences with homey terraces and panoramic sea views. For a more stripped-down meditative experience, the Karuna Yoga and Zen Retreat happens throughout the year in the island’s pristine Kalo Ambeli region which is another popular beach area in the south.
There are a pair of simple lunch spots like Taverna Manolis (at Psili beach) and Cyclops Tavera (at Mega Livadi beach), with a cluster of tables right on the sand. If you can peel yourself away from the sun one afternoon, be sure to check out Kerameio ceramic studio where sisters Natasa and Jutta Kalogeropoulou have been handcrafting elegant objects and jewelry on the island since 2014. (In summer they offer clay workshops.)
Although it’s not exactly Mykonos, Serifos comes alive at night. For carnivores, nothing compares to dinner at Kambia, a no-frills outdoor dining establishment where locals go to enjoy the most flavorful charred steak and pork on the island. Later, everyone heads to the Yacht Club, which, given its name, is a surprisingly low-key bar with solid cocktails and no shortage of raki, the national drink of neighboring Turkey. The night usually ends in Chora, the main town of Serifos, when the crowds at Stou Stratou and [Gaidaros bar] spills out onto a maze of narrow, winding alleyways. After they’ve gone home, nothing makes a sound in the dark of night except the windmills caught in the warm summer breeze.
