Why Kefalonia and Ithaca should be your next Greek island escape
The islands of Ithaca and Kefalonia are a joy out of season — you can see why Greek hero Odysseus was so keen to return after the Trojan wars.
Ed Grenby - 15 April 2025
The journey to Ithaca took Odysseus ten long years – and that was three millennia before the phrase “air traffic control delays” had even been invented.
The Greek hero was, according to The Odyssey, travelling by sea, returning from the Trojan wars (which had themselves lasted ten years). Homer’s epic poem recounts Odysseus’s adventures on the way (cyclops, sirens, Scylla, Charybdis… it really wasn’t his decade) as well as what happened when he got home. Uberto Pasolini’s new film The Return concentrates on the latter part: Ralph Fiennes is an imposing but tortured Odysseus, Juliette Binoche (his English Patient co-star) his wife Penelope, beset by suitors in his absence – and by doubts when he returns.
Clearly, Ithaca was an island worth a bit of travel time then – and still very much is. Even today, visitors must arrive, Odysseus-style, by boat: the nearest airport is on sister island Kefalonia, just a mini ferry-hop away. That means holiday-makers often pair the two together with, say, a week on Kefalonia and a couple of days across the strait on Ithaca. It’s a great combo, especially if done in that order, because coming from pretty much anywhere in the world, Kefalonia feels like four or five large steps back in time, to an era of almost prehistorically blissful tranquillity – and then, coming from Kefalonia, Ithaca is the same, but even more so.
Odysseus was racked with guilt for returning to his homeland alone, so many of his men slain in battle or in transit. But for me, sneaking into Kefalonia late last October, at the end of the island’s “season”, the solitude is delectable. The beaches are empty, historic attractions feel like they’ve opened just for me, taverna waiters shruggingly invite me to choose whichever table I like. The villages are so sleepily quiet you can hear the goatbells tinkling, and the islanders have both the time and inclination for filoxenia – the love of strangers and of hospitality that the Greeks have somehow held onto all these centuries. On top of all that, the weather is perfect – the hair-dryer heat of summer has passed, but it’s still T-shirt temperature right up till bedtime.
There are pleasingly few must-see sights on Kefalonia: a couple of ancient castles, most notable for their panoramas over this countryside island; a charmingly non-bustling capital, Argostoli, where boat captains ply their trade for trips round the island; Melissani Cave, where sunlight cascades through a sinkhole to turn an underground lake neon-turquoise. Beyond that, it’s just dozens of postcard-pretty bougainvillea-strewn, whitewashed villages, and more winsomely wizened old olive orchards than you could shake a traditional harvesting trident at. (Those tridents are still used, incidentally: the time-honoured technique is simply to bash the olives out of the branches onto nets spread beneath.)
And beyond all this, there are the beaches. Kefalonia and Ithaca are fringed by some of the most desirably, almost-drinkably turquoise-watered coves in the whole Mediterranean, with a mix of soft-sanded and prettily pebbled strands curving seductively alongside them. The most famously photogenic is Myrtos, in the north of Kefalonia, though it’s run a decent second by Antisamos, which looks out over toward Ithaca itself. Both, in fact, featured in the 2001 adaptation of Louis de Bernières’s Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, set and shot on Kefalonia (The Return was, whisper it, actually filmed mostly on Corfu).
My own favourite stretch of sand was Paralia Petani, though perhaps partly because of the journey. It’s out on Kefalonia’s even quieter western extremities, and nosing my tiny hire car round the hairpin mountain roads with the windows down was a blast (as was catching the cute little ferry back across the bay to Argostoli in the evening; those hairpins would have been hairier after dark).
There were two lovely slivers of sand within rolling-out-of-bed distance of my hotel, too. Eliamos (eliamos.com) is on the southern edge of Kefalonia, which means the vistas from each guest villa – ranged up a hillside of gorgeous gardens so everyone gets a view – are out towards the neighbouring isle of Zakynthos. (Odysseus was so taken with the scene that he set sail and conquered the place.) Eliamos is jointly owned by an upscale interior designer, so it’s no surprise that it looks beautiful throughout, with a Greek-yogurt-and-thyme-honey colour palette that’s restful, redolent of the island’s heritage, and (coincidence?) perfectly mirrors what I have for breakfast each morning at the splendidly locavore-leaning little restaurant. Come lunch, it’s usually rocket-and-peach salad beside my private pool (all rooms have one); and for dinner, I can’t keep my tentacles off the excellent octopus.
The best thing of all here, though – and it’s true anywhere on Kefalonia and Ithaca – is those timelessly sigh-inducing views out over the sparkling Ionian Sea. So little seems to have changed in the landscape or lifestyle here since Homer was writing, you feel Odysseus would recognise the place instantly. And, if he had any sense, he’d never leave again.
The Greek hero was, according to The Odyssey, travelling by sea, returning from the Trojan wars (which had themselves lasted ten years). Homer’s epic poem recounts Odysseus’s adventures on the way (cyclops, sirens, Scylla, Charybdis… it really wasn’t his decade) as well as what happened when he got home. Uberto Pasolini’s new film The Return concentrates on the latter part: Ralph Fiennes is an imposing but tortured Odysseus, Juliette Binoche (his English Patient co-star) his wife Penelope, beset by suitors in his absence – and by doubts when he returns.
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Clearly, Ithaca was an island worth a bit of travel time then – and still very much is. Even today, visitors must arrive, Odysseus-style, by boat: the nearest airport is on sister island Kefalonia, just a mini ferry-hop away. That means holiday-makers often pair the two together with, say, a week on Kefalonia and a couple of days across the strait on Ithaca. It’s a great combo, especially if done in that order, because coming from pretty much anywhere in the world, Kefalonia feels like four or five large steps back in time, to an era of almost prehistorically blissful tranquillity – and then, coming from Kefalonia, Ithaca is the same, but even more so.
Odysseus was racked with guilt for returning to his homeland alone, so many of his men slain in battle or in transit. But for me, sneaking into Kefalonia late last October, at the end of the island’s “season”, the solitude is delectable. The beaches are empty, historic attractions feel like they’ve opened just for me, taverna waiters shruggingly invite me to choose whichever table I like. The villages are so sleepily quiet you can hear the goatbells tinkling, and the islanders have both the time and inclination for filoxenia – the love of strangers and of hospitality that the Greeks have somehow held onto all these centuries. On top of all that, the weather is perfect – the hair-dryer heat of summer has passed, but it’s still T-shirt temperature right up till bedtime.
There are pleasingly few must-see sights on Kefalonia: a couple of ancient castles, most notable for their panoramas over this countryside island; a charmingly non-bustling capital, Argostoli, where boat captains ply their trade for trips round the island; Melissani Cave, where sunlight cascades through a sinkhole to turn an underground lake neon-turquoise. Beyond that, it’s just dozens of postcard-pretty bougainvillea-strewn, whitewashed villages, and more winsomely wizened old olive orchards than you could shake a traditional harvesting trident at. (Those tridents are still used, incidentally: the time-honoured technique is simply to bash the olives out of the branches onto nets spread beneath.)
And beyond all this, there are the beaches. Kefalonia and Ithaca are fringed by some of the most desirably, almost-drinkably turquoise-watered coves in the whole Mediterranean, with a mix of soft-sanded and prettily pebbled strands curving seductively alongside them. The most famously photogenic is Myrtos, in the north of Kefalonia, though it’s run a decent second by Antisamos, which looks out over toward Ithaca itself. Both, in fact, featured in the 2001 adaptation of Louis de Bernières’s Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, set and shot on Kefalonia (The Return was, whisper it, actually filmed mostly on Corfu).
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My own favourite stretch of sand was Paralia Petani, though perhaps partly because of the journey. It’s out on Kefalonia’s even quieter western extremities, and nosing my tiny hire car round the hairpin mountain roads with the windows down was a blast (as was catching the cute little ferry back across the bay to Argostoli in the evening; those hairpins would have been hairier after dark).
There were two lovely slivers of sand within rolling-out-of-bed distance of my hotel, too. Eliamos (eliamos.com) is on the southern edge of Kefalonia, which means the vistas from each guest villa – ranged up a hillside of gorgeous gardens so everyone gets a view – are out towards the neighbouring isle of Zakynthos. (Odysseus was so taken with the scene that he set sail and conquered the place.) Eliamos is jointly owned by an upscale interior designer, so it’s no surprise that it looks beautiful throughout, with a Greek-yogurt-and-thyme-honey colour palette that’s restful, redolent of the island’s heritage, and (coincidence?) perfectly mirrors what I have for breakfast each morning at the splendidly locavore-leaning little restaurant. Come lunch, it’s usually rocket-and-peach salad beside my private pool (all rooms have one); and for dinner, I can’t keep my tentacles off the excellent octopus.
The best thing of all here, though – and it’s true anywhere on Kefalonia and Ithaca – is those timelessly sigh-inducing views out over the sparkling Ionian Sea. So little seems to have changed in the landscape or lifestyle here since Homer was writing, you feel Odysseus would recognise the place instantly. And, if he had any sense, he’d never leave again.