Checking in: Mandraki Beach Resort

Greetings from my serene stone patio. I’m looking out at the dazzling blue of the Saronic Sea, trying to memorize how the color changes from hour to hour, so I’ll have a good answer when my five-year-old niece asks me my favorite shade of blue.

I’m here, nestled in a small cove. A thirty-minute walk (or a short boat ride) from the main port of Hydra.

This is an island I’ve had the pleasure of staying on before, but never before in the way I’m experiencing it now.

I’ve been able to take a month here, and turn it into a ‘Gemini trip’ (shoutout to Lynette for making that a thing). Two distinct personalities, contained within one adventure. “Start fast, end slow” is how LB recommends, and I can confirm this is a genius formula.

You see, Hydra can be a difficult island (if you’ve been here for a while you already know I love difficult islands). If you’d like to live in a house with a stunning view of the port, you’ll need to reach it by climbing up 250 ancient stone steps (I can report that your average ‘flights of stairs per day’ will be 29 if you choose this path). Your suitcase and provisions will arrive by donkey. There are no cars here, so you walk. Or you wait for a boat, weather permitting. Everything you need, buy or consume you schlep around on foot (which the New Yorker in me LOVES). Beaches are pebbles, or rocks. You mold yourself to the shape of the rock you are perching on, so choose wisely. Being on this island can feel hard, sweaty, and rugged. There are no shortcuts here.

Where I’m staying is an oasis amid all this: Mandraki Beach Resort, an elegant and tranquil island counterpoint to bring the slow half of this ‘Gemini adventure’ to life.

I was hosted by the resort for a short stay as I wrap up my month living on Hydra, and I couldn't be more grateful. It is here I have discovered another layer to this incredible island.

Arrival is a shock to my system; I’ve been on the go for weeks at this point. This experiment has been fruitful, but it is wearing as well. Stepping into the world of Mandraki Beach has come at an opportune time.

In the mornings I am greeted by the sound of the island’s cicadas ceaseless whirring as I step onto my terrace and marvel at the Mediterranean sun. It’s still early, at least by Hydra standards, and the warmth is already rising. Mornings here are worth savoring. The hotel is quiet, the cove too. I take breakfast by the sea, accompanied by a few sailors who have arrived in their dinghy for an early coffee. Here the sea is your front yard. It’s still as glass today. The water calls me in.

A long cool swim. A fresh lemonade. A book to get lost in. A lounge on my terrace, before a soak in my very own sun-warmed pool. A watermelon salad eaten in the sun. Watching the boats arrive and depart from their moorings as the day passes. Is there a better feeling?

Wrapped in a bathrobe, nowhere to be. A gentle nudge arrives via WhatsApp, would I perhaps like a beach chair reserved for the following day?… if you insist ;-)

I sit down with Arthur, the charming hotelier responsible for this oasis, and discuss his vision for the project, which he began working on in 2018. As with every property in Hydra, the story starts well before this. The site of the hotel was once a base for General Miaoulis in the 1800s, and had a previous life as a hotel of a less elegant existence (but glamorous inhabitants nonetheless — Frank Sinatra and Sophia Loren to name a few).

Arthur discovered the island in the 1960s, when instead of an hour-long hydrofoil, it took a four-hour steamer to arrive. Hydra was the place where the glamorous residents of Athens chose to escape to. The lore of the island continues through the decades with artists seeking it out, for the light and the cheap rooms.

He describes Mandraki Beach Resort as “a step away from a full life.” His intention is for you to want to do nothing when you come here. It’s a place of respite on an island that has a current all of its own, the duality of this is magnetic and charming.

It’s a bold promise: come here to do nothing.

With only seventeen rooms here, you’re seen, known, and cared for. It’s a simple, authentic form of care that’s actually hard to pull off. This is why I seek these places out. What draws me to independent hotels is simple: I want to feel someone’s perspective made tangible, across look, feel, and act. I want hospitality and brands that weren’t built in a boardroom, but lived into by the people who have created and run them.

That’s the lens I bring to brand work too, a fascination with how brands come alive, and how people actually experience them.

Here the long days of Mediterranean summer have their own logic: languid slow mornings as the heat of the day sets in, lunch by the sea, swimming time and time again, sunsets stretching past 9:00 PM, dinners that linger, stars that arrive hours after you expect them.

It’s a fine balance (remember, it’s a ‘Gemini Trip’). To stop and rest. To soften. To allow.

For a whole day I don’t leave this cove. I’ve written before about choosing slowness as a strategy. Here it’s less a choice than a physical law. So I surrender.

What happens when you stop optimizing the trip and let the island set the pace instead?

I don’t know every inch of this island as I yearn to, but each time I visit I discover new delights.

Late in the evening on my last night, I walk the old stone path that leads back to this cove from the port, weaving around the hills, marveling at the blanket of stars above me and the water lapping at the shore.

Places like this remind us, it’s powerful to slow down.

Isn’t it a gift to do nothing?