Romantic in Laurium

Romance out of Lavrio begins with the right logistics: the port is an hour from Athens, the morning ferry leaves — and by lunchtime the two of you are on Milos, an island better suited to this genre than its better-promoted neighbours. There are noticeably fewer people than on Santorini, seventy-odd beaches to choose from, and half of them look otherworldly: the white rocks of Sarakiniko polished by wind to a lunar smoothness, the many-coloured coves of the south, the warm shallows of Paleochori.

The day's script writes itself. Plaka is made for walking without a route: a maze of white lanes, courtyards with bougainvillea, the kastro on the summit from which the whole gulf is visible. In the evening this is where people climb for the sunset — the sun goes into the sea beyond the cape, and it is a spectacle without the queue for a place that on other islands has long been part of the programme. Below, in Klima, the boat-garages called syrmata stand right in the water, and dinner against them is a local classic.

The practical side also works for a couple: a local escort removes the worry of crossings and the order of stops, and the morning-out-evening-back format spares you moving with suitcases. By night the ferry returns you to Lavrio, and there remains the short drive along the dark Attic shore — not a bad ending to a day begun on another island.