A Month In Greece

The latest in our August OOO series: we hand the keys over to Tracy Georgiou, who writes the Substack Long Weekend, a “travelogue for a creative life”—always an inspiring read. From the pleasures of solo travel to letting down her guard at Esalen, Tracy is constantly drawing our attention back to the importance of connection and presence to sparking creativity—in travel, in life, and in work. When she told us she was going to spend a month working (she has a consultancy that specializes in lifestyle and hospitality brands, also called Long Weekend) from Greece this summer—we were curious (and jealous!). Below, she fills us in.

This summer, I decided to do something new and a bit bold.

My life as a brand development expert across luxury, hospitality, retail, and partnerships takes me to many interesting places. My curiosity and love of travel in my personal life usually adds an additional set of trips for the year… I can find myself on the road so often, I’d started noticing a pattern where I never have time to just be. When I’m back home in L.A., life is a lot quieter. I live at the beach, and it’s mostly work, and then relaxing and recovering at home.

So, last winter, when it was time to start visioning my travel for the year ahead, I decided to make the space to take myself away to Greece for a month. Not for a vacation, a visit, or an escape, but to linger.

I came to Greece with a question, rather than a plan. What would it feel like to live and to work somewhere else for a month?

This island experiment was fueled by a love of travel, yes. But it’s also fueled by curiosity, and the questions that I’ve been asking lately. What would it feel like to live and work from a few places during the year rather than just one? Could I be lucky enough to have a home base in Europe someday? If so, where would that be? How does it feel to be away to live rather than to just holiday?

I’m a seeker. I’ve come to accept that. Part of that nature is asking the questions. And part of that nature is developing the courage to simply be quiet and sit with myself and see what comes up.

It’s funny, this duality, this study in contrast that continually comes up in my life. Recently, I’ve been back and forth between the desire to settle down, and the longing for adventure and for finding someplace new. So, for the summer, I chose to get away in order to stand still. Lean into the duality, and hopefully emerge with a new perspective on it all.

In this spirit of curiosity and play, I picked a place on the map and decided to be there for a month. Just to see what would happen.

Of course, I couldn’t be in *just* one place, so before I kicked off my month, I took a slight detour to a new (inconvenient) island.

This part of the trip started like any other: a text thread between adventurous, curious friends debating which difficult island we should go to this year. You see, I have a thing for difficult islands, and I have a wonderful cohort of adventurous friends around the world who agree. When island curiosity strikes, I know one of my first calls is always going to be my friend Zoe. She has the same craving I do to experience new tiny, inconvenient islands. After living in Athens for a decade, we like to joke that she is a Greek island matchmaker and can accurately put your personality with its ideal island match. Somewhere in the air, on a flight from Los Angeles to San Francisco last year, I convinced her to come to Greece this summer and check out Folegandros with me.

There are few things as fun as a really good adventure, and Folegandros was exactly that.

A small, dramatic Cycladic island, wedged next to Milos. It has a landscape of cliffs, terraced rocky hillsides and a classic chora at the heart of the island. There’s a small (often photographed, and showing up in my algorithm constantly now) church perched high above the town, accessible by walking up a meandering path.

We decided to rent a little house high on a hill above Agali beach. Usually the two of us relish finding our favorite new simple island hotel, but the view of the sea from atop the hill and being stationed on one of the few directly accessible beaches got us. (For what it’s worth, staying in the chora looked really delightful too, and Anemomilos seemed cute… but if you want to be able to walk to a swim, Agali is your place… I’d try Blue Sand Hotel or their villas.)

Living in a cove on the top of this hill was one of the highlights of my year. We got into our daily rhythm quickly: coffee at Panorama Terrace, a bowl of yogurt with fruit and honey, and a morning swim. Long languid afternoons, a stroll over the hills or a drive into town for a change of scene. The beach at Agali is ‘sandy’ by Greek standards, and a very BYO setup. The charm for me was exactly that. There’s nothing too overly ‘done’ here. The swimmable coves nearby lent plenty of places to enjoy climbing out of the water, scurrying up and stretching out on the warm, flat, smooth rocks to sun ourselves. (We ate dinner at every restaurant in the cove, O Psaromiligkas was a favorite, and the simple Taverna Agali.)

From Agali, you can take a boat to a few other small beaches, which are primarily accessible by water.

The adventurous can scramble by foot over a large hill, hiking up and down buffered by the incredible blue expanse of the Mediterranean glittering below, to a small cove with one little hostel that has rooms for rent (and no electricity, fyi) and a tiny little pebble (clothing optional) beach that is perhaps one of the most special places I’ve ever spent a day. Very few people, families, friends. I’m not sure about any other Americans. My cheeks have never been happier. A beach so quiet and intimate in scale. It made for an ideal place to stretch out all day to swim, sunbathe freely, and embrace my inner ‘feral ocean child’ nature.

The beauty I found on Folegandros was space. Space to live, space to think, space to slow down and space to marvel at the beauty of it all. An island that wasn’t overcrowded. A town where I didn’t bump into a litany of other Angelinos or New Yorkers all in the flow of their ‘Euro summers.’ Spots like this feel special, and fleeting. I hesitate to even write about them at times. I love the limited options, the particular taverna hours, times of day when nothing is open and there is nothing to do. A breakfast with only one or two options, rather than a whole palatial spread.

It’s a necessary counterpoint to life in LA. Here’s that duality again. A balance to the optimization and streamlining we’ve done to our lives. I love not being able to have anything delivered. To not be allowed to pack my day so full that I have no choice other than getting the thing I ‘need’ now rushed to my door.

I left the island feeling strongly that I’d like to spend more time living in places less accessible. Perhaps this is age, or perhaps this is me leaning into my own creativity and artistic sensibility. It’s a wild and freeing thought to think about being someplace difficult, and the beauty that would come out of spending more, less-optimized time in a place like this.

Then it was on to Hydra.

To best answer the question of what it would feel like to live and work somewhere else for a month, I decided it was necessary to lean into the duality of experience a month could hold. Thanks to my brilliant friend Lynette, I was inspired to turn this into a Gemini trip. A trip that holds duality. Her recommendation is to start fast and end slow. Program two very different rhythms and experiences into one adventure. I knew it couldn’t all be introversion, asking big questions, feeling uncomfortable and sitting alone with my journal someplace beautiful. There was living to do!

So, a chunk of my Gemini experience in Hydra would be living as a ‘village girl.’ Staying in an apartment high above the port, climbing 29 flights of stairs a day, in between trips to restaurants, shops, coffees, swims, and socializing. I would immerse myself in island life. Make friends, stay out too late, eat gyros in the town square at midnight, sneak off for night swims, and do anything else that felt fun, exciting, and free-flowing. The reflective balance to bring the Gemini contrast into the trip was a quiet, languid and slow set of days in a cove off the main port at Mandraki Beach Resort. Time to reflect, review, and process everything that I’d hoped would come up.

If you know me, you know I’m serious about process. The container for the experiment had been set, and it was time to live it. It was time to get loose. To not be too precious about it, and to just enjoy being somewhere else for a little bit and see what comes out of that.

I have professed my love for this island before, and got to feel that WAY more deeply with this trip lasting longer than ever before. Spending a month here spoke to how I crave to travel and spend time out in the world lately. I’m done rushing. That’s a simple, but not easy one for me.

My ‘village girl’ routine on Hydra was a good one. Write a bit, work a bit, swim a bit, socialize a bit, sun a bit, eat a bit, savor and repeat. It was such a pleasure to return to my favorite places over and over again. To eat multiple plates of sardines at To Pefkak, and the ice cream at Il Casta. L’Americano became my evening apero spot, or Windmill to watch a sunset. Long dinners at Oraia (my friend Kim is local to the island and kindly took me to her favorite spot in the port, among many others).

I’m personally a big fan of finding your favorite rock to stretch out on when you need a bit of sunbathing. But, Bellevallia, St Nikolaos, Mandraki Beach Resort and Spilia are all great for a beach day, too. I was working, so each of these became a satellite office and graciously accepted me with my laptop at times (St Nikolaos being the exception, due to spotty cell service/Wi-Fi).

If you need lunch by the sea, Lefertaki’s taverna does just fine, and for dinner Douskos is a classic, as well as Ostria (IYKYK).

I don’t think you could talk about Hydra without mentioning the island’s literary past, and current artistic soul. Visit Josh & Dimi at the Hydra Book Club in the port, and Stamatia’s Hydra Bookstore, see a movie outside at the Art Cinema and if you’re lucky you can get into the Old Carpet Factory for a peek (they occasionally open their doors to host).

My driver back in Athens laughed hard at me when I told him I was going to Hydra for a month. He exclaimed, “But you will be so bored.” For me, the beauty of Hydra is there is so much on offer, but also not that much to do. That’s part of the magic. With a little bit of effort, my social calendar was robust, and there was always time to bump into a friend, enjoy the kismet, have an unexpected coffee or meal, and just see where the day takes you.

And since this Gemini adventure started fast, it was time to end it slow. This was a new way for me to experience Hydra. Mandraki Beach Resort presented an elegant and tranquil island counterpoint to bring the slow half of this ‘Gemini adventure’ to life.

For a few days, I didn’t move from their cove. I took breakfast by the sea, accompanied by a few sailors who have arrived in their dinghy for an early coffee. The water was still as glass in the cove, perfect for a morning swim. I got lost in a book. I lounged on my terrace. I soaked in my very own sun-warmed pool. I enjoyed a fresh lemonade and a watermelon salad, eaten in the sun. You come here to do nothing, and that’s exactly what I did… Well, OK. I did a lot of journaling, a lot of processing, a lot of feeling, and a lot of writing. But I promise you, I slowed down and did nothing too.

It was unusual for me to take myself out of the social rhythm of the island. The space felt uncomfortable, and not always pleasant. But it was also so special. I filled the whole journal on this trip months faster than I would have usually. Looking back at those pages, I’m reading the writing of a woman who is feeling bold and dropped in, yet sensitive and tender at the same time. There’s that duality again. Which is my sign that setting up this experiment was a success.

I’m sitting in the return from this odyssey right now. Trying to process it all, holding on to the feeling. Re-reading the journals. Thinking about the next steps.

This one-month experiment has been fruitful.

There are the practical things. I’ve been reminded that I love the pace, the flow, the synchronicity and vibe of Hydra. I love living in a place where the day is enjoyed on foot. You walk to run your errands. You bump into people on the street. This scratches an itch I’ve been neglecting since I moved from New York four years ago.

I’ve learned to eat dinner at 9 pm more often. It feels good to drop into the rhythm of a place and to get taken out of your own habitual space. I’ve also learned that maybe I would like to live in Europe for a while. I’m still not sure exactly where, but it felt really good to be somewhere different for a month.

I can feel I’ve returned differently than how I was when I began. I had a friend in LA tell me that this is the most relaxed she has ever seen me.

It’s amazing the shift this summer trip has already made in my emotional and inner life. I’m more resolved. Resolved to put down some of the worries I tend to carry with me. To travel more often, and more fearlessly. To live more fearlessly. Full. Stop.

I said here that this is the year I choose to be radically and unapologetically obsessed with my life. It’s time to make good on that promise. After all, what better place to sit with inspiration, ideas, and big dreams than a small, difficult island?

Next up for me, I’m going on a sail in the Aeolian islands in a few weeks (staying on Filicudi at Yolanda’s recommendation), then spending a week antiquing through France. After that, back to L.A., Mexico, and onward from there, who knows.

I do know I’ll be leaning into the adventure.

The duality of it.

The stop and the go. The quiet and the loud. The time to reflect and prepare, and the time to take action.

I can’t wait to see what I find.