“Island hopping in the Mediterranean in February?” my friend asked, incredulously. “It’ll be cold and wet, everything will be closed and there’ll be no tourists,” she continued.

Well, I thought, it’s certain to be warmer than Britain, my home country, and I’m sure the local people still eat, drink and hold animated conversations in the tavernas (Greek cafes) and coffee shops all year round. They don’t need visitors for company. And as for a scarcity of tourists, sometimes the fewer the better.

The idea of ferryboats carrying the locals from island to island without an accompanying horde of partying backpackers filled me with delight. Riding buses and hearing only the native language appealed to me.

And walking into a local restaurant causing the regulars to fall silent and stare at the stranger awakened my sense of adventure. Museums with no queues — the list goes on and on.

The picturesque harbors of the Greek islands offer sanctuary from the Aegean’s famous tempests.

I got off to a good start in Haifa, Israel’s main seaport. I’d been staying on a nearby kibbutz, and managed to find a berth on a cargo ship bound for Cyprus with just two other passengers. Moshe, a 74-year-old Israeli, was delivering a couple of cars to a customer.

Like most Israelis of his generation, he has led an eventful life and had many stories to tell. The other passenger, Tomas, a young man from Poland, had been traveling all over the Middle East, even managing to enter Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia.

When we reached Cyprus, an island nation in the eastern Mediterranean, however, my dreams of splendid isolation were dashed. Walking along the seaside promenade in the port city of Larnaca, I heard English voices everywhere, and many Scandinavian ones, too.

It turns out that Cyprus is popular with long-stay retirees from cold northern climes. The Scandinavians swim and play ball games on the beach, while the British keep the bars busy in the evenings. Lovely island, but time to move on.

I had picked out Rhodes, the largest of the Dodecanes islands and easternmost of the major Greek islands, as my next destination. Unable to find a ship bound for Rhodes, I had to resort to a less-romantic means of travel, an aircraft.

I arrived in the city of Rhodes, at the far northern end of the island, at about 9 p.m. Its labyrinthine maze of cobbled streets are punctuated with archways and courtyards that had a Gothic, surrealist quality to them in the nighttime gloom. I’ve visited some narrow-laned towns in my time, but this one takes the biscuit. It was too dark to read the map in my guidebook, and the streets were deserted.

I walked past the shuttered hotels and shops before stumbling across a jeweler’s store that was still open. The owner led me to a tiny hotel, and before long I found myself in a charming, centuries-old bedroom. Feeling encouraged, I headed off into the lanes in search of food and drink. I found both in a cave-like tavern where I enjoyed a bowl of pasta while sitting next to a roaring log fire.