Scattered across the teal-blue sea as if the gods had dropped their marbles, the Greek islands are like nowhere else on earth. They are the stepping stones to thyme-scented breezes, drowsy olive groves and retsina-soaked nights under a brilliant frieze of stars.

And what could be more exciting than opening a dog-eared map and tracing a curious finger over its 6,000 islands, then high-tailing it to Athens, hopping on an old bone-shaker of a ferry and alighting on one with a name you’ve never heard of?

The flipside? Overtourism , a thorn in the side of popular isles like Crete , Corfu and Rhodes , which heave with tourists in the peak summer months. The situation has reached boiling point on the islands of Santorini and Mykonos , both of which introduced a new tourist tax in

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