The islands of the Northern Aegean take up the whole northern part of the archipelago and, except for little Samothraki, they are among the largest Greek islands. Nevertheless, they are not major tourism magnets, and they are mostly favored by Greek families that choose to spend the summer holidays in their relatively quiet, picturesque, and inexpensive villages, beaches, and landscape. Starting from the south, Ikaria and Samos are like two giant wedges in the middle Aegean that separate it in two. Samos is one of the few places outside of the mainland whose mountain tops get snow in the winter and is the place where Pythagoras was born and developed the principles of mathematics and geometry. Ikaria, a land of wild beauty, west of Samos, is the place where the mythodological hero Icarus, son of Daedalus, the builder of the Knossos palace and the Labyrinth, plunged into the sea and died, after he flew too close to the sun and his wax wings melted. Chios, the next island up the map, is the land of mastic and shipping magnates. The white, tasty resin of the mastic tree grows only on the island of Chios and, in particular, in a certain area in the south of the island, and nowhere else in the world. There is not much else that grows on the rocky land of Chios thus its people took to shipping and became some of the most successful shipping magnates in the world. Shipowners from Chios dominate the shipping industry in London, New York, and Piraeus. Lesvos, or , in Greek, Mytilini, is the third biggest Greek island and a world by itself. A major olive oil producing region, with about 15 million olive trees on its soil, Mytilini's cultural and commercial life, until 1922, was inextricably linked to that of Asia Minor, due to their proximity. The island is the birthplace of Sappho, the first love poet in history and the first woman of letters in history. Given that Sappho's attentions were directed mainly toward the same sex, the colloquialism for women homosexuals, "lesbian", is derived from the birthplace of the poet, i.e. "the one from Lesvos". Limnos, further north, is one of the least visited of all Greek islands and, as is usually the case, one of the prettiest. The capital of Myrina and the island's beaches are some of the most attractive in the whole country. The lack of extensive tourist facilities translate into a quiet lifestyle, even in the peak, summer months, that is an original picture of Greece before the beach towns and and the mega resort hotels of the last 40 years. Finally, Thasos and Samothraki. The latter is one of the least accessible of all Greek islands and the former, very close to the Thracean coast, one of the greenest and most beautiful. They are both gems waiting to be discovered by the foreign tourist. |
