The Peloponnese: Greece’s Hidden Gem for Affordable and Relaxed Living

The Peloponnese: Greece’s Hidden Gem for Affordable and Relaxed Living
Greece’s tranquil peninsula offers stunning landscapes, rich history, and a relaxed Mediterranean lifestyle.|©iStock/Kisa_Markiza

The highway to hell needs better signage, because I’ve clearly missed my turn.

Somewhere behind me is the Alepotrypa Cave, one of the four Gates of Hades that Greek mythology claims exist here on the Peloponnese peninsula, a land that hangs off the Greek mainland like a petrified claw print permanently scratched into the Aegean Sea.

This is where European civilization emerged with the Mycenaeans more than 3,000 years ago, in a mountainous, semiarid landscape that at times is lush with eucalyptus, Italian cypress, and fun-sized foliage of thistle and wild thyme… and at other times, suffers what seems to be Mother Nature’s version of alopecia.

The Venetian, Ottoman, and Byzantine empires each rolled through here and controlled the peninsula at various times, and their influences are visible everywhere.

Homer’s Odyssey and The Iliad borrow liberally from Peloponnesian towns and villages—such as Kardamyli on the Mani coast—that are still alive with people all these millennia later. Sparta, a name from a high school history class you’ve forgotten, is a city that still exists. Same with Olympia, birthplace of the Olympic games (I had lunch there; a tasty moussaka).

There are a million travel press stories out there about Athens. And an equal quantity on Corfu, Crete, Mykonos, Santorini, and a usual-suspects list of Greek isles. What the traditional travel press doesn’t spend much time on is the Peloponnese.

Probably because the vibe is so different here. Tourism seems quieter, less invasive. That’s not to say tourists are missing; they’re certainly not. But this is not Athens by any stretch. Here you face smaller crowds, lesser traffic, no noise other than wind, birds, and waves when you’re near the sea, and some Greek bouzouki music spilling from cafés. In the villages you happen upon, church bells peal from small stone Orthodox chapels that, quite often, date back 800 to 1000 years.

And it’s definitely not Mykonos and Santorini, densely packed with Instagrammers so desperate for a like and a follow that they trod the same trails every other wannabe influencer trods when trekking the overexposed corners of Greece. (Indeed, the mayor of Santorini just proposed a plan to cap tourist arrivals, because this island of 20,000 residents is routinely overrun by as many as 17,000 cruise ship passengers per day, deboarding and flooding every corner of the island they’ve seen photographed in magazines or social media apps.)

The Peloponnese peninsula is none of that.

Let me show you what it is…

"Jackie Onassis on a Polished Mahogany Runabout"

My first stop was a mistake.

I’d folded myself into a rented blue Mini Cooper in Athens and made for the Isthmus of Corinth that connects the mainland to the Peloponnese. About two hours later, I pulled up in Porto Heli, a one-stoplight town without a stoplight—and a fishing village trying to up-market itself into a resort destination.

The AKS Porto Heli hotel was lovely, but frankly not a lot here compels me to recommend this town as a must-see destination.

Three miles past Porto Heli, however, is the even-tinier village of Kosta. Here I found red-and-white water taxis idling in the tranquil bay. Thirty euro and seven minutes later with Dimitrios, the sunleathered water-taxi driver, I was on the tiny island of Spetses.

As we arrived—ferries and water taxis are the only approach available—Dimitrios casually noted, "My friend, if you do not like it here, then I am taking a dead man across the sea."

Spetses: Cobblestone streets, luxury yachts, and seaside charm.
Spetses: Cobblestone streets, luxury yachts, and seaside charm.|©iStock/Gatsi

Dimitrios had nothing to fear, for there is nothing to not like about Spetses. This is the summer playground for upper-crust Athenians. Reachable by high-speed ferry from Athens in under three hours across the Myrtoan Sea, the main hillside village of white houses and orange-tiled roofs spills down to the water.

Watching Spetses come into view, I sense a yachting lifestyle in the Mediterranean, with leisurely mornings in the early sun and Aperol spritzes in the afternoon. Al fresco seaside dining under bare lightbulbs hanging from tree branches… casual but fantastic seafood eateries where millionaires relax in khakis, black t-shirts, and designer flip-flops, their dates in flouncy sundresses, wearing sunglasses well past the sunglasses-hour.

That’s the Spetses vibe: mellow wealth—Jackie Onassis on a polished mahogany runabout. Unconcerned with anything other than a nap and where to find the next spritz and snack… maybe a plate of grilled octopus or the vinegar-marinated anchovies snarfed down with a glass of white "barrel wine"—literally house wine from a barrel—at Patralis, a 10-minute walk from the ferry dock.

I texted my wife some photos of Spetses with a plea: "Can we PLEASE move to Spetses? I could live the rest of my life here!"

She did not reply.

Nevertheless, amid her deafening silence, I finished off a second glass of wine and played around on a few local real estate websites, where I found a truly lovely two-bedroom, one-bath apartment for sale up in the hills just above the town center. A bit more than 825 square feet, archways between rooms, tile floors, and a 175-square-foot terrace overlooking the sea in the distance.

All for €270,000, or just under $300,000.

I’ve spent most of this year looking for an apartment in Lisbon, where my wife and I live, and a $300,000 price tag would buy us a hovel requiring $200,000 or more in renovations and upgrades to make it livable.

I closed the app, pretended it was all a lie, and slow-walked back to my hotel through alleyways lined with small homes, restaurants, bars, and shops. For five or six months of the year—October through Orthodox Easter in the spring— the island is all but closed, only a few restaurants and food shops open for the few locals who live here year-round.

"Now—May—is when the foreign tourists start showing up," a shopkeeper told me. "English, French, a lot of Dutch, maybe a few Americans who’ve heard about us somewhere. And in July, August, nothing but Greeks everywhere… the wealthy people from Athens who come here every year." (Back at that parking lot in Kosta, the cashier told me in broken English to "early get here, summer" because the 400-space lot fills completely and quickly.)

Best time to visit: mid-September.

"Everyone is gone but everything is still open. The weather is perfect, and the island is yours," the shopkeeper offered as a commotion out front pulled both of us out of our conversation. An older gent on a moped had bumped into a parked scooter and knocked it over, and he was struggling to right the fallen vehicle. A young guy—tanned, 30s—showed up quickly, lifted the prone bike, patted the old man on the back, and sent him away with a smile.

Aside from its tranquil beauty, the most glaring fact about Spetses is its obvious lack of cars. You’ll see a taxi here and there, and a delivery truck servicing local retailers, but personal cars are transport-non-gratis on the island. You’re either walking, or you’re steering a motorcycle, a scooter, a moped, a three-wheeler, or a Rascal (if you’re older and can’t get around easily)… or if you’re a tourist, you might be ferried along in a horse-drawn carriage.

I opted for bipedal transport. No better way to experience a place than by wearing out the soles of your sneakers.

Do clocks tick in Mani? Find peace among its fortresses and fishing villages like Limeni.
Do clocks tick in Mani? Find peace among its fortresses and fishing villages like Limeni.|©iStock/Giorgos Kritsotakis

"A Great Place to Do Nothing All Day"

Late afternoon. Parched, I strolled into a café built out over a calm bay where pricey yachts had anchored to bob gently on ripples.

"I’m dining with a monster," a voice called out from the next table. I looked up from writing one of my Field Notes columns to see a waiter approaching a couple that looked to be in their late-60s. The woman, gray hair stylish in a runway model way, was holding up a small, empty bowl. "He ate all the sauce! Can we have a bit more—and more bread, too."

The waiter laughed and turned heel toward the kitchen. I snickered and she noticed, and we all got to talking.

They were from Iowa and had been on the road for six months—basically following the sun: the Philippines in November and December; January in Bali; February and March in southern Turkey; and the last six weeks traveling Greece.

They came to Spetses on the high-speed ferry from Athens "because it seemed like a great place to do nothing all day. And that’s mainly what we do," she told me. While she handles some freelance graphic arts assignments for an hour or two every morning, "he walks around and flirts with all the Greek waitresses."

He shrugged.

"Friends back home aren’t sure what to make of us, but this is the life we want. And it’s the best life we’ve lived yet."

"The Concept of Time Never Really Rooted"

The next morning, I was back on the water taxi heading to my car and a date with the Mani Peninsula at the far southeastern tip of the Peloponnese. This is rugged terrain. A jagged landscape of mountains that eons ago surged from the sea like a serpent’s backbone. Not much seems to have changed in the intervening millennia.

Mani is quiet, particularly the farther south you venture. The tourist coach trade peters out quickly, and what remains are narrow roads snaking along mountainous switchbacks, crawling through the tiniest of villages and fishing communities with stone homes and bougainvillea-covered facades.

This is "Deep Mani," a fjord-like sliver of mountainous scrubland where the concept of time seems to have never really rooted. The locals—Maniots—descend from fighting tribes who helped Sparta defeat Athens in the Peloponnesian War back in the 400s BC, and to this day the region is splattered with decaying hilltop fortresses built from local stones.

Fishing villages pass for the "big city," and here and there the domes of stone Orthodox churches nudge above the squat tree line of olive, wild pear, and what a local man sitting in a café told me are kermes oaks. Across a skinny street stood the Transfiguration of Christ the Savior church, a pocket-sized Byzantine chapel dating to the 14th century.

Inside, I found ancient icons of Orthodox saints painted on peeling stucco walls in a space lit, barely, by a warm sun streaming through the open door and slats in the stone cupola above. A frail and stooped elderly woman in a black shawl lit three slender candles in a dusty brass candelabra filled with sand. I hung about for a bit after she left and was struck by the silence, the only noise a cicada crooning somewhere outside.

Hunger struck a few more miles down the road, and I came upon a roadside café built along the edge of a steep tumble down to the sea. The owner, a woman who lived in an apartment above the eatery, spoke no English. I speak no Greek. So, I just pointed to something interesting in a display case of sandwiches and pastries and sat out on the roof deck looking out over the sea and the barren mountains.

I later learned that what I’d bought was a diples, a traditional Peloponnesian pastry of fried dough bathed in local honey and chopped nuts. With a strong Greek coffee, not a bad breakfast.

Beach Life for 1/6 California Prices: "This is where I want to establish roots"

Jen Noble, a 42-year-old business consultant and content creator, moved to Stoupa along the west coast of the Mani peninsula… and it’s not hard to see why.

Back in West Hollywood, she was paying $3,000 a month for a two-bedroom, one-bath apartment. In Stoupa, a beach community of less than 700 people, the same size apartment is just $500… and a five-minute walk from the beach bordering a quintessentially Grecian-blue sea.

In 2015, Jen traveled through Italy with friends who’d bought a home in the Mani village of Agios Nikolaos. They invited her to come and stay with them a while in exchange for a bit of help fixing it up.

"Soon as I arrived," she told me, "I absolutely fell in love with the place. The food. The beaches. The people, so welcoming and warm. I spent my life traveling all over, and I never found a place that felt like home. Even growing up with my parents, I couldn’t wait to leave. But here, the Peloponnese, is the first place where I’ve really felt like, ‘Ok—this is where I want to establish roots.’"

Jen’s lifestyle, she says, is radically different than L.A. She doesn’t own a car and instead walks everywhere, "which I love; it’s one of my favorite activities."

"Everything here is on Greek time, so you learn to live slower. Sunday is forced relaxation because nothing is open. It’s a much more serene atmosphere. A lot less stress."

Jen first gained temporary Greek residency through the country’s "independent means" visa, open to anyone who can prove they earn at least €2,000 per month (about $2,200). She’s now in the process of seeking permanent residency.

Reacting to the joy in Jen’s voice, I asked if the Peloponnese was just a waystation in her life. "No!" she said. "This is the place I see living long term. I never want to go back to the US. This is it for me."

A Deeper Kind of Relaxation

Imagine a deeply relaxed, permanent-vacation kind of life in Poros.
Imagine a deeply relaxed, permanent-vacation kind of life in Poros.|©iStock/HiddenCatch

It was mid-afternoon when I pulled into Kalamata, home to those famous olives.

Kalamata sits at the bottom of the peninsula along the Messinian Gulf, surrounded by mountains and olive groves. It’s a much smaller, far quieter version of Athens. The city center feels sedate, even docile. The two-lane seaside road at the southern edge of the city center is lined with low-rise hotels and cafés, many of which offer seating on the pebbly beach beneath umbrellas—inviting a languorous lunch with souvlaki and a sweet-tart of a lemonade the waitress claimed was made from lemons grown in the Poros Lemon Forest in the northeast corner of the Peloponnese.

Later, over a dinner of grilled fish and Kalamatan red wine—made from the local agiorgitiko grape that is both spicy and fruity in the same sip—I eavesdropped on a couple that was Scottish (her) and, based on the accent, French (him). They were arguing the merits of possibly moving to Greece. The wife was clearly for it; the husband waffled.

"I’m tired of rain. I’m tired of cold. I’m happy here. We’re both relaxed. You don’t even complain about your back," she insisted.

"My job," he began to counter…

"Can be done anywhere. When’s the last time you worked at the office?"

Silence…

"It would be more affordable, right?" he offered moments later.

"Versus Glasgow? What kind of question is that?"

That evening, I dangled my feet into the plunge pool on the patio of my hotel room at the Elysian Luxury Hotel & Spa and listened to the sea a block away. A family of bats zipped and dodged just above a ficus tree, picking off unlucky insects here and there as the sky raced quickly from purple to indigo to black. I was so deep in thought about that Scottish woman’s "relaxed" comment that I didn’t realize nearly an hour had passed and my feet were getting cold.

She wasn’t wrong, that Scot. The Peloponnese is relaxed in a "permanent vacation" kinda way. I’ve visited various parts of Greece, various islands, and certainly they’re relaxing too. But they’re often relaxing in a pressure-packed way, odd as that sounds. You rush around all day ticking off the boxes of places you need to visit, or those Instagrammable moments you want to capture before returning to the hotel for that relaxing sunset, libation in hand.

The Peloponnese feels different, like relaxation is simply part of the prix-fixe menu. I slept well that night.

More Olive Trees Than Humans

I headed north out of Kalamata after stopping at a local bakery the next morning for another diples.

Somewhere between Kalamata and Olympia, Mani’s rugged mountains moderated as I motored past stands of eucalyptus and fir that masked unending rows of olive trees. If I discover one day that Greece has one olive tree for each human on the planet, that fact will elicit zero surprise. They’re simply everywhere.

The road turned north along the coast and the sea here teased with the shifting colors of blue gemstones—turquoise and aquamarine yielding to the lapis of deeper waters. I had no idea what time or even what day it was because Peloponnesian moments all melt into one another. As I turned inland to approach Olympia, the landscape resembled formal gardens reclaimed by history and time.

Olympia feels like an abandoned Hollywood movie set, like an epic Greek tragedy filmed decades ago. The city itself is small and too often crammed with tourist coaches making for the site of the original Olympic games in 776 BC.

Having arrived mid-morning in May, the rocky pathways through ancient Olympia were not as heavily crowded as the number of parked buses hinted at. And within an hour, most of the tourists were gone and I had the stadium to myself—now a barren patch of rectangular dirt in a shallow and grassy bowl-shaped indentation in the earth. Frankly, I wasn’t terribly wowed, and as I told my wife in a brief text conversation, "I probably wouldn’t come back to Olympia. There’s too much else to see that’s more interesting in the Peloponnese."

Half an hour later, I was pulling to a stop in front of the Dexamenes Seaside Hotel on a remote stretch of sand in the quiet beach village of Kourouta. This place is so small that Google, instead of labeling it "a city in Greece," simply refers to it as a "human settlement." This is hippie chic—as laidback and unhurried as any place I’ve alighted on this planet.

The hotel opened in 2019, fashioned from a century-old winery on the sand. That winery’s unique location served a specific purpose: to funnel fermented grape juice through pipelines to a platform in the sea, to load onto boats at anchor just offshore for transport to France, where the juice became wine.

A multimillion-dollar makeover turned that winery into one of the most zen hotels I’ve ever checked into. Eighteen of the rooms at Dexamenes (Greek for "tanks") are former wine storage vats—square, thick-walled concrete rooms remodeled in an industro-hip fashion. The restaurant, dex.Machina—in what was once the winery’s engine room—sources its ingredients from local farms, particularly those run by young farmers working in a style counter to today’s industrial affairs. I found grilled artichoke hearts on the menu, a personal weakness, and a slow-roasted lamb so tender it might as well have been a paté.

If you can imagine an old Kodachrome slide from the 1960s—the cloudless skies were always a muted steel blue and the entire scene bathed in a dreamy haze like a memory you struggle to recall—that’s Dexamenes and Kourouta Beach. Languid. Lazy. An unending summer afternoon.

I don’t know—maybe that’s the Peloponnese peninsula as a whole: A dreamy haze of sunbaked days in an often-Spartan and mountainous landscape, surrounded by those blue Aegean seas that define every poster of Greece you see hanging in every Greek restaurant you wander into in America.

Paraphrasing what Dimitrios told me back on that water taxi ride to Spetses, you’d have to be dead not to like it here.

A Big Fat Greek Lifestyle… Without The Big Fat Crowds

Cross the iconic Charilaos Trikoupis bridge into lovely Patras, where you can rent for $375 a month.
Cross the iconic Charilaos Trikoupis bridge into lovely Patras, where you can rent for $375 a month.|©iStock/JordeAngjelovik

We write a good deal about Greece here at International Living, and for good reason. From seashore to mountaintops, the country is a quintessential Mediterranean destination. The food is farm-fresh, natural, and off-the-charts delish. Seaside living is laidback, easy, and magnitudes more affordable than pretty much anywhere along the US coast.

If you prefer big city life, I found a neighborhood in Athens by accident that would definitely be my No. 1 place to live, if I were to relocate there (find out where it is in the next article).

If the rattle and hum of Athens and its 3.2 million people is too busy for you, the Peloponnese makes for a perfect place to retire or work remotely without the crowds.

Kalamata, down along the southern coast, is a 2.5-hour drive from Athens on a super-modern highway. Even closer—two hours away on a similarly super-modern highway—is Patras, a lovely city on the west coast that looks out over the Gulf of Patras onto some of the most awe-inspiring seaside mountains I’ve ever seen. Those are the two largest cities on the Peninsula, but "large" is relative. Patras is home to about 215,000 people; Kalamata less than 75,000.

In both, you’ll find everything you need in life—shopping, quality medical care, nightlife, fantastic restaurants, entertain ment. And both hug the sea if you’re a beach lover.

They’re both also vastly cheaper than Athens.

I found a lovely three-bedroom, two bath apartment spread across more than 1,200 square feet two blocks from Kalamata’s marina for just €1,000 per month (about $1,100.) And nearby, I found a newly remodeled and upscale two-bedroom with a kitchen spacious by European standards for just under $1,000.

Patras is even more value-priced, sometimes laughably so.

I came across a three-bedroom apartment of more than 2,000 square feet, overlooking the gulf and those mountains of Western Greece, full-grown lemon and orange trees just outside your door, for a bit more than $1,200 per month. A newly renovated two-bedroom in the heart of the city, a few blocks from the port and a 15-minute walk to a lovely park and the Patras lighthouse… just $640.

Even crazier: Outside the city center, you’ll find nice two-bedrooms for as little as $375 monthly.

I picked Jacksonville, Florida as a comparison, since it’s a second-tier beach city like Patras and Kalamata. A lifestyle that costs $5,000 per month in Jacksonville is less than $3,000 in either Patras or Kalamata.

Basically, most Americans could easily afford living in the Peloponnese as digital nomads or on just their Social Security checks and maybe a small bit of additional nest egg drawdown.

Just remember that outside of Patras and Kalamata, much of the Peloponnese is seasonal. Again, this isn’t Athens—many restaurants, shops, hotels, and the like shutter for winter, so smaller towns can feel exceptionally quiet in the off-season.

Then again, you’re close enough to Athens that you can pop into the big city quickly and easily.

And though this is Greece, winter can be chilly, with temperatures down into the 30s and 40s F. Rain is common (sometimes snow, particularly in the mountains). Stone houses and apartments can feel cold and damp, so space heaters and dehumidifiers are usually a necessity.

For healthcare, the smaller towns often have a clinic. But for anything beyond basic medical care, you’d need to head to a population center such as Kalamata or Patras, where you’ll find regional hospitals and medical specialists.

Best of all, Greece offers relatively easy to get visas that allow for residency by way of digital nomadism, investment, or independent financial means, such as Social Security and other retirement income streams.

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