Day 2: Pacing ourselves to Hydra

Trip

Greece+Cyprus 2025

Location

Hydra 🇬🇷

Date

September 14, 2025

We started the day with breakfast at 📍Underdog. A combo restaurant and specialty coffee that offered us quality coffee and a delicious breakfast. We did have their sourdough cinnamon buns which were good, but not enough cinnamon to get perfect marks or replace the now closed Dope.

From our breakfast, we walked downhill to the metro (really surface rail) station and made our way to the port. From there, we did the customary wandering around the large port to find our ferry. For probably the first time we had a gate number! Finding gate E8 seemed like something trivial, especially when you arrive at the port near E6. What nobody tells you and no sign will inform you is where E7 ends. Turns out a gate has space for many ships. From our entry in the port to where our ship was docked we walked about a kilometre. Nothing on a hiking scale, just more noticeable in the high sun (solar noon being near 13:30 here).

In the great tradition of ferries (Greek or Italian in our experience) we were late. Surprisingly right on time for departure but arrived 15 minutes late in Hydra. Our host met us at the port and walked us the 20 meters to our appartement for the next three days, right next to the aptly named 📍Oven Bakery. Our host introduced us to every room: this is the bedroom where you sleep, this is the bathroom where you shower, don’t forget to turn on the water heater 20 minutes before your shower, this is the kitchen to have breakfast (no assumption we’ll cook any other meal, based on the appliance they are right) and this is the living room. You find the keys next to the door.

We unpacked our bags - as much as carry-on bags can be, and headed out to refresh ourselves at 📍Papagalos (παπαγάλος translating to parrot). We already have plans for dinner so opted for wine and sparkling water. One of the lessons we learned in 2022 is that in Greece, white wine was almost always a hit and rosé was most of the time a miss. Still, Karine likes rosé so we had to test the fact again and… confirm that 2022 rules still apply in 2025.

Next stop is 📍Anemone, described to us as the best pastry in the country. We wanted something to hold us off until dinner. Karine did spend some time researching the name of pastries that would not kill me - the Greeks being fond of putting nuts in any form of pastry they do. A galaktoboureko is essentially puff pastry with a vanilla or lemon pastry cream in the middle, drowned in sweet sirup. That's what we picked, brought to the apartment, and devoured while chilling on the patio. Neither the view nor the pastry could be called the best we’ve had, the pastry won by being delicious and unpretentious while the view requires a zoom for it to get any good.

From the moment we stepped on Hydra we started noticing its feline residents. Most of them seemed healthy and relaxed. The absence of cars and presence of community care probably helps. I wanted to keep count of how many cats we saw on our way to the restaurant but lost count after 17.

💡

Reserving your first dinner in a new city saves you from trying to figure out where to eat once you’re there. It limits you to restaurants that accept reservations online which can be limited but you can then spend the following day stopping by the other places you want to go and reserve at the stop.

Dinner is at 📍Téchnē. Being our first night in Hydra, we reserved. 20 minutes into our sitting we couldn't tell you if the food is any good, as we haven’t received any, but, they have a cute family of kittens and a good number of adult cats who make the rounds. We’re wondering if we should have ordered more so we could share with all the kitties. In the end it took an hour but we received our main course. I wouldn't say we ordered the fish and the seafood pasta in the hopes of enticing the cats but I won’t say it did not factor it in either. Once we started “dropping” (read hand feeding) the cats some fish we had the bulk of the family at our table. They do not fight but they will guide your hand to their mouth using their murder mittens (read paws with very sharp claws). On top of being cat-approved we did enjoy the meal. Everything was well executed and tasty.