Ithaca
Ithaca has no airport. Most travellers reach it as a ferry from Sami on Kefalonia, twenty minutes across the strait, and the journey itself is the right way to arrive at a place built into Western literature on the strength of one homecoming. The pairing matters: Ithaca is hard to justify as a single trip but works as a two-or-three-night extension of a Kefalonia stay, especially from the north.
The Homer connection is the reason most people come and is best taken lightly. Stavros, in the north of the island, has a small archaeological museum and the so-called School of Homer, a Mycenaean site that scholars argue may or may not connect to Odysseus's palace. The Cave of the Nymphs above Vathy contains stalagmites and stalactites that match Homer's description of the cave where Odysseus hid the Phaeacian gifts. Constantine Cavafy's poem Ithaka, written in 1911, is the more reliable companion text. Read it on the ferry over.
Vathy, the capital, wraps around a deep natural harbour, near-enclosed enough that ferries appear to be entering a private lagoon. Pastel houses line the curve of the bay and the water stays glassy even when there is wind out in the strait. A handful of restaurants serve straightforward fish, one bookshop, one ice-cream shop, no nightlife to speak of. Kioni, on the eastern coast, is the village most photographs come from: three abandoned windmills above its small harbour, perched on a hillside that runs straight down to the water.
Practical advice. Hire a small boat in Vathy for one day; the swimming coves on the eastern coast are reached only from the water. Frikes, between Vathy and Kioni, has the better lunch tavernas. Two nights inside a Kefalonia week is the right shape; staying longer than three nights starts to feel like staying in someone else's life.
House Notes
Arrival
Ithaca has no airstrip of its own. The cleanest private arrival is helicopter to Kefalonia EFL, then 20 minutes by tender from Sami to Pisaetos. For yacht guests, Marina Vathy holds approximately 100 berths in a near-enclosed natural harbour that provides shelter from all directions except the north-west — an arrival that renders any other mode of reaching the island academic.
The address
Perantzada Hotel 1811 — an 1811 neoclassical mansion on the Vathy waterfront, extended in 2007 with a modern wing, now running 17 individually decorated rooms. The interior carries work by Verner Panton, Tom Dixon, and Ingo Maurer alongside Greek artists. Pool terrace overlooks the bay. The most considered address on the island; alternatives are private villas or the chartered yacht.
Sirenes, Vathy
The one kitchen on the island that rewards a reservation. Nikos Kostopoulos has run Sirenes on Odos Niriidon — a block behind the Vathy waterfront — since 1993, with a menu built on modern Greek technique and Ionian sourcing. The wood-panelled room is small; the terrace seats go first. Walk-ins in August are unlikely to succeed.
The Thiako oil
Aetos Ithaki produces extra virgin olive oil from the Thiako variety — a cultivar native to Ithaca's Venetian-era groves — on a small estate on the slopes above Aetos, facing the Ionian. Every olive is hand-picked and cold-pressed in an organic-certified mill. Grove visits and tastings are available by arrangement; oil can be ordered ahead and sent to the villa.
The Loizos inscription
Loizos Cave, at the north-west corner of Polis Bay near Stavros, was a cult site from Mycenaean times through the Roman period. The 1930s excavations produced 13 bronze geometric tripods — a direct echo of the Phaeacian gifts in the Odyssey — and a clay mask bearing the inscription ΕΥΧΗΝ ΟΔΥΣΣΕΙ: a prayer to Odysseus. The finds are held at the Archaeological Collection of Northern Ithaca in Stavros, open Wednesday through Monday.
Anogi
The oldest inhabited village on the island, set at 550 metres on Mount Niritos, is reached by a road that earns the altitude. The Church of the Dormition of the Virgin dates from the 12th century — its frescoes, worked in the manner of Epirus with later Cretan influences, are among the most significant Byzantine paintings in the Ionian. Around the village, limestone monoliths stand between three and nine metres; the tallest, at nine metres, is known as Araklis.
Gidaki
The finest swimming beach within reach of Vathy is not accessible by road. Gidaki — white pebble, clear water — lies two kilometres north of the harbour and is reached either on foot via a 30–40-minute path from Skinos bay, or by water taxi from Vathy's quay. The boat runs from 11 in the morning; confirm the day before in July and August when places go quickly.
Atokos, by RIB
Atokos — uninhabited, owned by the shipping family Tsakos, administered by the municipality of Ithaca — lies nine kilometres north-east of Vathy. The protected anchorage at One House Bay on the eastern coast is the destination. Odyssey Boats, operating from Vathy harbour since 2016, runs the route as a skippered RIB day with two swim stops at Atokos before lunch at Kioni. Monk seals are occasionally sighted in the surrounding waters.
Kathara
The Monastery of Panagia Kathariotissa, patron of Ithaca, sits at 556 metres on the south-eastern shoulder of Mount Niritos, its life beginning around 1696. From the bell tower the whole island falls away — Vathy and its enclosed bay, Perachori, the Echinades, Kefalonia, and on a clear day Zakynthos beyond. The name comes from the icon found in the ash of burning kathara, the local word for dry brush. The drive up earns the altitude; go for the late light.
Perachori
Perachori climbs the hillside 3 kilometres above Vathy at around 300 metres, an amphitheatre of whitewashed courtyards looking down on the harbour and out to Lefkada and Zakynthos from the high point at Agnantio. Within walking distance lie the ruins of Paleochora — the medieval capital of Ithaca, abandoned in the 16th century once the pirate threat eased — and the Taxiarches Monastery. Most of the island’s wine, oil, and honey is made on these slopes.