Forget Taylor Swift's wedding partying: Did Brad Pitt's "Intoxication" Start in Hydra?
Brad Pitt may blame alcohol, but after filming The Riders on Hydra, we suspect the island’s beauty, history, and aggressively curated charm had something to do with it.
Being married to original nepo baby Angelina Jolie—and then divorcing her—could probably drive even Pope Leo to drink. So Brad, we forgive you. You got “back on the wagon,” as you told Esquire, and America is having a conniption because America.
But I suspect Brad Pitt was not so much getting moderately intoxicated by alcohol in Greece as getting punch drunk on the beauty of Hydra itself.
Pitt was on the island last winter, you might recall, filming Edward Berger’s The Riders, an adaptation of Tim Winton’s novel in which a father and his young daughter travel across Europe searching for the girl’s mysteriously vanished mother. Hydra is among the film’s shooting locations.
I can see why the place would get to him
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I’ve long been ambivalent about Hydra. Not because it isn’t pretty—it is. Not because it’s boring—it isn’t. But there are no particularly good beaches, and the swimming spots tend to get crowded precisely when you want them most. Apart from the port, which is ravishing, the island can feel oddly resistant to the eye. It is beautiful, certainly, but sometimes beautiful in a rather self-conscious way.
And then there’s the atmosphere.
Hydra has an almost unhealthy fixation on “the arts,” an impressive number of references to Leonard Cohen, and the faintly snobbish air of a place that knows exactly how it wants to be perceived. You feel this most strongly around the harbor, where everything seems to have been arranged by someone with very strong opinions about weathered wood.
Hydra inescapably trades on its past, and clownish Jeff Koons bopping about—usually on somebody else’s yacht—does not exactly offset that.
Much of the island’s history is storied and significant. Pop into the excellent Museum of History and Archives if you doubt it. But the aesthetic presentation of that history can sometimes feel a little too just-so. Even the Piraeus Bank logo appears to have been washed in slate grey to match the main town’s wan palette.
It can strike you as slightly ham-fisted, visually speaking, in that grating we-are-just-so-darn-perfect Nantucket-y way.
Islands, it is well known if not widely acknowledged, should come with a little mayhem.
You won’t find much of it here—not even a sliver of Mykonos or Ibiza.
Then there’s the location. Islands close to Athens are fresh goods spoiled: being this close to the capital means that, sooner or later, mass tourism gets its hands on you.
“It’s unbearable here in summer,” a local Hydriot told me over coffee. “I grew up here. You can’t imagine how different it was back then.”
Actually, I can imagine it, because I remember an era before everyone was chained to an algorithm, hunting for content on Instagram and TikTok. But the good old days aren’t coming back, and the trick, as ever, is managing what we’ve got.
Which is why I’ve come around to a different way of doing Hydra.
Don’t stay. Do it like a boss as a day trip.
Hydra in a day
The easiest way is to book a business-class seat with Alpha Lines aboard the SpeedCat I from Piraeus. The crossing to Hydra takes about an hour and fifteen minutes, and the vessel has an Alpha Club Business Area, a quieter section above the main economy seating, as well as an open sun deck.
The current summer timetable gives you a civilized amount of time on the island: a 9:45 a.m. departure from Piraeus gets you to Hydra at 11:00, while the 5:00 p.m. return gets you back to Piraeus at 6:15.
That is plenty.
Arrive, stroll the harbor, wander up and down the stairs, look at the donkeys, buy something you don’t need, have lunch at Oraia, coffee at Isalos, and spend several hours pretending you are the sort of person who has always understood why Leonard Cohen found this place irresistible.
Then leave.
That last part is important.
Hydra is one of those destinations that benefits from an exit strategy.
The island is compact enough that you can absorb the essential Hydra experience in a few hours: the port, the handsome stone houses, the winding lanes, the churches, the donkeys, the yachts, the galleries, the expensive restaurants, the people dressed as if they have just wandered out of an art-world dinner in Chelsea.
And then you get back on the boat.
There are practical advantages to this arrangement, too. Hydra has no cars, which sounds idyllic until you realize that there are also a lot of stairs. There are donkeys, naturally, and plenty of luggage that has to be moved around by somebody or something. For some people this is charming. For others it is fine for a Kodak moment and less fine when you are carrying a suitcase.
The absence of cars is part of Hydra’s peculiar magic, but it also contributes to the island’s sense of being preserved in amber. Nothing much seems to have been allowed to happen here without first being approved by history.
This is perhaps why the place has become such a magnet for artists, writers, collectors, celebrities and people who describe themselves as artists, writers, collectors and celebrities.
And yes, there is Leonard Cohen.
There is always Leonard Cohen.
You can practically hear Suzanne drifting over the harbor if you stand still long enough.
The Brad Pitt problem
We suspect, though, that Brad got hooked by what Hydra lacks.
Before he bought mousey Grindr (what’s that, Pete Buttigieg?) founder Joel Simkhai’s house in the Hollywood Hills, wasn’t Pitt holed up somewhere near Carmel? We knew that wasn’t going to last.
Hollywood stars are constitutionally incapable of leaving beautiful places alone.
Still, I understand the attraction.
Hydra has an extraordinary ability to make ordinary things look cinematic. A fisherman standing beside a caique looks like a fisherman standing beside a caique in a movie. A donkey climbing a staircase looks like a donkey climbing a staircase in a movie. A woman carrying groceries home looks like she is carrying groceries home in a movie directed by someone who has won an Oscar.
Which, in Pitt’s case, is rather convenient.
The Riders is precisely the sort of film for which Hydra makes sense. The island’s beauty isn’t glossy in the Mykonos sense. It is quieter, older, more severe. It has stone and shadow and blue water and a port that looks almost suspiciously perfect when the light hits it.
Perhaps that was enough to intoxicate him.
I’ll concede that it nearly intoxicates me.
But only nearly.
Why I still wouldn’t sleep there
I can’t quite recommend an overnight in Hydra—not when you can experience the town in a few hours and then retreat to Athens before the island’s particular brand of preciousness begins to wear on you.
For beaches and broader exploration, other Saronic islands, including Aegina and Poros, have more to offer. Maybe even Methana.
Hydra also has a reputation as a paramours’ getaway, rather like Niagara Falls with better architecture. Americans may arrive hoping to dress up their Instagram accounts; Greek couples, I observed, sometimes arrive for weekends away from Athens in order to, shall we say, dress down.
The ripple effect is predictable: restaurant prices can be inflated, and genuinely good accommodation can be scarce at busy times.
So take the hint from the island itself.
Come for the beauty. Stay for lunch. Admire the port. Visit the museum. Find a shady café. Watch the yachts come and go. Allow yourself one Leonard Cohen reference, but no more.
Then get the hell out.
Hydra is best when you know you’re leaving.
And perhaps that is what Brad Pitt understood before the rest of us.
He didn’t fall in love with Hydra because he wanted to stay there. He fell in love with it because, for a few hours, there was just nowhere else to be.
In sum, Hydra: Go for the day & do it the smart way by spending a little more.
