The sea was too rough for us to venture out, and since the quay at Adamas is unprotected from waves that can build up during a south wind, we sought shelter on the south side of the harbor, off Rivari Beach, where we remained for two of our three days.

For most of the group, the storm made the cruise a bust. But I had a different perspective. During the time we remained off Rivari, with nothing much to do but read, talk, and walk along the sand, I enjoyed getting to know those strangers—especially one, who would eventually become my wife.

Harbor Pursuits

While beaches are always a magnet, some islands have other equally compelling characteristics. Lesbos, the large northeastern Aegean island where, Lord Byron tells us, the ancient poet Sappho "loved and sung," is popular among bird-watchers, who come for its size, varied topography, and nearness to the Turkish mainland. Green-carpeted Sifnos, in the Cyclades, has a well-earned reputation for producing locals with a creative flair, including potters, poets, and chefs—among them Nikos Tselementes, who remains, fifty years after his death, Greece's best-known practitioner of the culinary arts. (Many Greeks still refer to any cookbook as "the Tselementes.")

"You know this name, Tselementes?" I ask George Troullos, who is behind the desk at my Sifnos hotel, the Petali Village, overlooking Apollonia, a village of narrow streets lined with shops selling some of the best of the island's pottery. He says of course he does—Tselementes's name is known everywhere in Greece, and possibly the world, and the island has indeed produced many chefs.

"And are there any other famous ones?" I ask.

He pulls a book from a shelf and puts it on the reception desk. The title in English is Traditional Sifnos Recipes. It was written by his mother.

The compelling characteristic that attracts me most, though, is not birds in the bush or chefs fifty years dead but interesting harbors, which is to say harbors where something is always happening, in full color, and where you don't have to go farther than the nearest awning-covered taverna to hear a good story.

On Lesbos, I might just make my way to the village of Molyvos, for harborside dining just steps from where the fishing boats tie up. At the harbor on pine-covered Skopelos, whose residents profess to be delighted that their Sporades neighbor, Skiathos, has an airport and they don't, I could easily spend all day doing nothing but watching and listening, especially down where small wooden fishing boats are pulled out of the water for repair. The same goes for the harbor on steep-sloped Symi, near Rhodes, where ornately carved wooden sailing vessels, known as gulets, from the nearby Turkish coast, are often tied up alongside its quay.

My favorite Greek Islands harbor, though, is on Hydra, one and a half hours south of Athens by hydrofoil. As you approach from the sea, one moment you are looking at an unwelcoming stretch of brown, rocky coast—which is what just about all of Hydra is—and the next you are in a natural amphitheater, the harbor and its quay a stage upon which some extemporaneous theatrics are always taking place.