Limnos – escape the mainstream in the Aegean
The Greek Island of Limnos Resorts and Beaches Guide
Oct 13, 2009
The excesses of package tourism have made no inroads into Limnos. It's blissfully free of nasty pubs with Premiership football on vast screens, all-day English breakfasts and lager-fuelled mayhem. Instead, butterfly-winged Limnos offers long, sandy beaches fringing an umber landscape quilted with cornfields and verdant vineyards.
For foodies, the Limnian muscat wine is addictive and local thyme honey is delicious with breakfast yoghurt. Perfect ingredients, then, for away-from-it-all beach holidays with none of the raucous shenanigans on more developed islands.
Where to Stay in Limnos
Lemnos’ appealing capital, Myrina, sits in a dramatic setting beneath an ancient fortress whose castellated walls undulate like a dragon’s back over a craggy headland. The town’s life and soul beats in harbour cafes where men twiddle worry beads and ceiling fans struggle to dispel wreaths of smoke above boisterous backgammon players. The main pedestrianised shopping street leads to a great beach, fronted by grand Ottoman-era balconied mansions and a strip of tavernas.
The bars along here can become quite lively in the evening with a party crowd of local trendies and off-duty squaddies. The port is a mellower place. Here, fish tavernas cluster on the quayside next to the blue and white fishing fleet, making it by far the most atmospheric spot for whiling away the evenings.
A mile south is Platy Beach, a sweeping crescent of sand with a low-rise holiday village. Thanos beach is in the next bay south, where lovers of seclusion will freak over the golden crescent of fine sand. Evenings in Platy revolve around hanging out in laid-back beach shack tavernas, or popping into Myrina - a walkable stretch, but taxis are plentiful and cheap.
Limnos - Best Sights around the Island
It's a good idea to drop in to Myrina’s Archaeological Museum before setting off to visit ancient Poliochni, Hefestia and Kavirio: the sites themselves are extremely ruined, so the museum helps to bolster the imagination with its excellent artefacts on display, including fascinating siren figurines from the 7th-century BC.
At Poliochni layers of mind-bendingly ancient civilisations recede from Homer’s era back to Neolithic. The setting on a wild headland flayed by meltemi winds is more impressive than the scanty ruins. At Kavirio, a few stubby columns are all that's left of the 8th-century sanctuary of the Cult of Kabiri. At the far end of the same marshy bay, a lady will point you past a ramshackle farmstead to the mostly unexcavated site of Hefestia, where you can poke around the remnants of a Roman theatre.
Moudros Bay was the Allies' base of operations for the tragic Gallipoli campaign of World War I. On the outskirts of fly-blown Moudros, a tranquil, well-tended cemetery holds the remains of 900 Commonwealth troops killed in the disastrous Gallipoli campaign.
Getting to Limnos from the UK
The uncommercialied nature of Limnos means there are no charter flights for the summer season, so the best option is to take a scheduled flight to Athens and connect from Athens. Limnos is connected by ferry to Kavala on the mainland and Lesbos, so it is possible to take charter flights to these airports and ferry over to Limnos.
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