The Greek islands won gold at the recent international travel awards organised by the prestigious British magazine 'Wanderlust', with the silver award going to Azores, and the bronze to Sicily.
Specifically, the Greek islands won the Most Desirable Region (Short Haul) Gold Award, at the Wanderlust Travel Awards 2021, the Greek Tourism Ministry said on Wednesday.
The award was received by the Greek National Tourism Organization's General Secretary Dimitris Fragakis at Kensington Palace, in the context of the World Tourism Market (WTM) fair being held in London on November 1-3.
Fragakis attended WTM 2021 alongside Greek Tourism Minister Vassilis Kikilias and also met with his British counterpart, CEO of VisitBritain Sally Balcombe, who congratulated Greece for being "the first country that reopened its tourism industry after the coronavirus pandemic."
RESOURCE | ABOUT THE GREEK ISLANDS
Greece has many islands, with estimates ranging from somewhere around 1,200 to 6,000,depending on the minimum size to take into account. The number of inhabited islands is variously cited as between 166 and 227.
The largest Greek island by area is Crete, located at the southern edge of the Aegean Sea. The second largest island is Euboea, which is separated from the mainland by the 60m-wide Euripus Strait, and is administered as part of the Central Greece region.
After the third and fourth largest Greek Islands, Lesbos and Rhodes, the rest of the islands are two-thirds of the area of Rhodes, or smaller.
The Greek islands are traditionally grouped into the following clusters: the Argo-Saronic Islands in the Saronic gulf near Athens; the Cyclades, a large but dense collection occupying the central part of the Aegean Sea; the North Aegean islands, a loose grouping off the west coast of Turkey; the Dodecanese, another loose collection in the southeast between Crete and Turkey; the Sporades, a small tight group off the coast of Euboea; and the Ionian Islands, chiefly located to the west of the mainland in the Ionian Sea.
Crete with its surrounding islets and Euboea are traditionally excluded from this grouping.
(Source: Wiki)
