More Than A Party

Ios, Greece Is A Modern Paradise

We had come from three days in Santorini, battling crowds to look over cliffs at Oia’s famous blue-topped roofs, and, to be honest, we weren’t sure what to expect next. The first time I had heard of Ios, our next destination had been in 1999, when two friends of mine had taken a ferry over during the summer between my sophomore and junior years of college. They had returned with a thrilling tale: somewhere between the island’s main towns of Chora and Ormos, they had partied hard, forgotten everything about the night, and ended up in the company of two Australian strangers.

That was a long time ago, yes, but Ios, over two decades later, has not quite lost its reputation as a party island. And yet, the first thing I noticed, as our car crept up from the port in Ormos and through the extraplanetary landscape — barren and beautiful sandstone boasting not a single home, unlike the overdeveloped and neighboring islands — was how quiet it was. 

There are no homes built across the island, but there are many, many churches (one for each day of the year, our driver told us, and a cursory fact-check confirmed that there are, in fact, 365 churches and chapels on the island that is a mere 42-square-miles big and that is home to only 2,000 year-round residents). On our drive to Calilo, a 30-suite bespoke luxury hotel opened by Angelos Michalopoulos and Vassiliki Petridou in 2019, I saw only herds of goats, and, once, a passing car. 

Of those goats: there are over 3.6 million of them, dotting the landscape, climbing the hills, and, sometimes, interrupting traffic on the roads. They belong to individual farmers but are allowed to roam free; travelers will note their large bells, worn around their neck. Eventually, each goat makes it back to its native home. The island is small enough. Ios is home, too, I later learned, to a petite and beautiful cheese museum, Diaseli, where owner Dimitris Haros, an Ios native, continues his family’s tradition of making cheese from the milk of his wandering goat flocks. One hot morning, my husband, sons and I stopped in for a tour and tasted yellow (aged) and white (fresh) cheeses alongside a fresh tomato and foraged caper salad, beneath a pergola draped with vines. 

Wine, slightly oxidative and ice-cold, sat in a ceramic pitcher. We could pour liberally at our own pace. Much of the Greek isles is suited to one’s own pace, I discovered. Care to lounge on the beach? The time belongs to you. Wish to belabor the point of lunch? Such is the will of August’s sun-drenched days. Ours felt long. Even sunset felt like an enchanting, drawn-out event, stretched out like taffy after a honey-soaked day in the sun. 

Cheese, tomatoes, plump capers, homemade wine, honey that tasted of lavender. It was as thrilling as the 8-course Cycladic dinner my husband and I enjoyed at CHES, Calilo’s degustation menu-only restaurant, which leans into each island and its native fare. Burned into my memory: a dish of fat mussels and clams in a seafood and bergamot broth, paired with Retsina, and recalling Mykonos; a gelatinous terrine of mackerel; and a play on cacio e pepe, a miraculous and satisfying carb-rich course that made me wonder why Greece is not better known for its pastas. 

One evening, my husband and I left our children to lounge by our room’s multitude of saltwater pools, all of which seemed to overflow seamlessly into one another (my favorite was the heart-shaped one, which overlooked the beach below). 

You don’t go to Ithaka, in the port, to party; you go for the restaurant’s pristine seafood, local goat, and reimagined spinach pie. And although you might go to Pathos Club & Restaurant, a club with a sunset view, for the more traditional Ios experience, a restaurant and sushi bar awaits upstairs. There, on a blushing pink and warm Greek summer evening, my husband and I ate through an omakase plate highlighting local fish — bruléed squid, caviar-topped scallops, thick planks of mackerel — as well as some of the most exquisite lamb chops I’ve ever tried. 

The orange globe of the sun sank into the water. Below, throngs of young dancers, their silhouettes highlighted in neon, bopped to the trance of electronic music. But we were long gone before the party even began.