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icon every year if my prayers were answered,” she said. On
her second visit, she missed the ferry back to Athens and
found herself with a 10-hour wait until the next one. She
hired a taxi to drive her around the island and was
“mesmerized,” she recalled, “by the views, the villages, the
hidden beaches. It’s been ten years since I built our house,
and I am still discovering beaches.”
Grabowski’s favorite culinary find on the island is a
taverna called To Thalassaki, which sits appealingly right
on the small Bay of Ysternia. In two weeks I made the trip
three times, and I would have happily eaten there every
d ay. O n m y fi r s t v i s i t , I w a s j oi n e d b y M a r i a N i k ol a k a k i ,
founder of the vacation-home rental company Beyond
Spaces Villas. When we entered the small room, all eight
casually arranged tables were taken. The crowd was
clearly sophisticated, and the effortlessly stylish scene
seemed to reflect what Nikolakaki meant when she told me,
“There is nothing pretentious on Tínos. This is an island
for the person who is looking for the luxury of simplicity.”
To Thalassaki’s menu listed about 20 dishes, and I
wanted all of them. The cuttlefish risotto, singing with
lemon zest, was the best I’d ever had. Mussels with capers
and anise were served with a garnish of wild fennel. A
salad of fresh cucumbers and melon was sprinkled with
feta and bee pollen. “We add four or five new dishes each
year,” said chef Antonia Zarpa, who has run To Thalassaki
with her husband, Aris Tatsis, since 2000. “When I create
recipes, I am drawing on culinary recollections of Tínos. I
cook dishes that are inspired by my grandparents.”
To truly get to know this island, it’s essential to get out
and walk. It’s the only way to access some of the most
spectacular beaches and to explore the villages where
people live almost as if the Industrial Revolution never
happened. One morning Dimitris Papageorgiou, a hiking
guide, led me, my husband, and our two girls on a four-
hour excursion over ancient trails between picturesque
towns. “There are more than seven hundred churches on
Tínos,” Papageorgiou explained as we passed a hillside
chapel barely big enough for one person. “Most of them are
maintained by local families.” In the little village of Volax,
we came upon a shop selling artisanal baskets made from
twigs. The old woman inside told us that the secret to
harvesting the twigs was to “collect them during the full
moon, because then they are without bugs.” I couldn’t help
appreciating how, on this irresistibly peculiar island,
lunar cycles and miracles are still central to everyday life.ONE AFTERNOON NEAR THE end of my
stay, I visited the convent on Mount Kechrovoúni, where
legend says the Virgin Mary appeared to a nun named
Sister Pelagia in her dreams, telling her where the island’s
famous icon was buried. Inside the fortified medieval
complex, I came upon dozens of ancient houses and
several churches—all of which appeared to be empty.
Some 15 minutes went by before I ran in to anyone. A nun
escorted me to the convent office. Sister Iouliano, theelaborately carved Christian symbols on the arched
lintels embellishing almost every façade. The main
square, surrounded by whitewashed buildings with
cornflower-blue windows and anchored by an ancient
plane tree, is stunningly beautiful, yet on the day I visited,
there were no tourists in sight. I spent a lovely hour sitting
at a café enjoying a slice of galaktoboureko, a semolina-
custard pie, and exchanging glances with the only other
person sitting in the square, a bearded Orthodox priest.
T h a t k i n d of q u i e t u d e i s w h a t m a k e s T í n o s s u c h a
prized sanctuary for people like Mareva Grabowski,
cofounder of the Greek fashion label Zeus & Dione. Her
family’s house here, a cubic structure that seems to grow
out of a rocky hill, looks out over the sea toward the island
of Syros. Grabowski discovered Tínos almost 20 years ago,
w h e n s h e m a d e a p i l g r i m a g e t o t h e c h u r c h t o g i v e t h a n k s
for her son’s recovery from complications following a
premature birth. “I promised I would pay tribute to the
34 OCTOBER 2017 / TRAVELANDLEISUREASIA.COM
Rustic shutters
painted in
the typical blue
in Pyrgo.