Islands are fewer and further apart in the northern Aegean. If you want to pack more isles into a week at sea, consider Hebridean Spirit's Legacies of the Cyclades itinerary. This one starts and finishes in Rhodes, hopping through the Dodecanese and Cyclades islands by way of Halki, Folegandros, Syros, Mykonos, Amorgós and Nisyros. Plenty of variety here: Rhodes Old Town is one of the most stunning medieval survivals in Europe. Ermoupoli on Syros is an odd time-warp port – it was once the most important entrepôt in Greece, and it conceals the faded grandeur of its 19th-century neo-Classical heyday behind the clutter of a working seaport.
I have been keeping quiet about Folegandros and Amorgós for many years, but the cat has crept out of the bag – these are two of the loveliest and least-visited of the Cyclades, and their whitewashed villages put more commercialised islands to shame.
