The Calm Cyclades.

The Cyclades are not all Mykonos and Santorini. Folegandros, Hydra, Amorgos, Sifnos and the back side of Paros remain among the slowest islands in the Aegean — places where the harbour cafés open late, the hilltop chora is closed to cars, and the only midday sound is the wind in the bougainvillea. This is the Cyclades the Greeks themselves go to: small white-washed villages, donkey paths instead of roads on Hydra, the long-shadowed afternoons of dolce far niente. The opposite of the high-season islands a ferry away.