Every trip has a moment that becomes the one you remember most. For this one it was a table in Preveza, Papoutsakia, Greek salad and people who between them had served in Somalia, sailed the Ionian and cooked the meal. Before that there was a cargo ship, a pilot boat, a Gaza march on the harbour front and a very good fish taverna in a bougainvillea-shaded alley. This is how the Ionian Bound series ends.
Nidri promised boat trips. Most of them went to beaches. The MS Christina went somewhere more interesting: Kastos and Kalamos, two small islands between Lefkada and Ithaca that most visitors to the Ionians never reach. A wartime submarine cave, a surprisingly ornate church on an island of forty people, a poet’s island you can only look at from the water, and a close pass of Skorpios. Not bad for a day that almost did not happen.
Nidri in bad weather is not somewhere to linger. So we caught the bus into Lefkada Town, crossed a bridge that swings open for passing yachts, spent the best part of two hours inside a medieval fort that most people drive straight past, and then got happily lost in a town built to survive earthquakes. Not a bad day for a rainy Tuesday.
Nidri was never an intentional destination. It was the means to one. Four nights on Lefkada’s busiest harbour front, in a town that knows exactly what it is for — and a walk inland to a waterfall that most people arriving off the ferry never find.
