After my seven-hour ferry journey across rolling azure seas, it’s a relief to be back on land. Along with a handful of locals returning from Athens laden with boxes of bougatsa custard pies and neat bags of shopping, I’ve arrived on the Dodecanese island of Astypalea – known as the butterfly island because of Mesa Nisi and Exo Nisi, its two wing-shaped islands linked by a narrow strip of land. You can break the journey in Naxos or Mykonos. But despite the length of the journey, nothing can beat the pleasure of leaving the bustling port of Piraeus and arriving on a peaceful Greek island by boat.
