Trips
& Karthea.
The doorstep is a path. The path is the island. The island, mostly, is its own.
The island asks to be walked.
Karthea — the most beautiful of the ancient city-states of Kéa — sits five hundred meters from the houses, on a hill above its own private bay. You can walk to it before breakfast. Most guests do, once.
Kéa has no airport, one road south, and four thousand years of things to find. We know the paths that are not on any map, the coves with no names, the hour at which the light arrives at Karthea. We arrange what you ask for, and step back. The rest is yours.
Four ways to leave the houses.
The ancient city of Karthea
Marble temples on a hillside above an empty bay. Walk the coastal path from the dock — forty minutes — or arrive by tender in twelve. No ticket, no fence. Sit in the shadow of Athena's columns and read.
A day on the wooden boat
Captain Stelios takes you around the south of the island — the caves of Ágios Símeon, the empty cove at Spathí, lunch anchored off Koúndouros where the fish are grilled on the boat itself.
Ioulída, the hilltop town
Whitewashed lanes carved into the side of a mountain. The famous stone lion, smiling at no one for twenty-six centuries. Coffee at the kafeneío of Mr. Kostas, who will tell you everything if you let him.
The bohemian walk
Not everything is on the map. Around Kea, the sea hides secret coves, ancient paths, and places that reveal themselves only to the curious. Follow the wind — it knows the way.
"We make no itinerary. We answer what you ask, and disappear when you'd rather we did."
— The Bohémians
From the door,
a coast unwritten.
The houses sit at 37°37′12″N · 24°20′41″E, on a slope above Otzia bay. South of us, four kilometers of uninhabited coast — pebbled coves, tamarisk shade, the clearest water in the Cyclades. There are no paths marked on any map.
