There is a particular kind of paralysis that hits anyone planning Greek island holidays. Greece has more than two hundred inhabited islands, and the difference between a good holiday and an unforgettable one usually comes down to something no booking site tells you: which village catches the afternoon wind, which beach is worth the drive, which harbour is still a working harbour at seven in the morning. This is the gap Ionian & Aegean Island Holidays has spent over twenty years filling. They sell Greece and nothing else, they have been voted Best Travel Company to Hellenic Europe at the British Travel Awards since 2011, and every booking is protected and bonded through ATOL and ABTA.
The package is the other half of it. Flights, transfers and car hire come included rather than bolted on at checkout, and the accommodation is handpicked: villas with private pools, seafront apartments, small family-run hotels. If you cannot choose between two islands, their multi-centre holidays let you split a fortnight across both.
Here is a quick tour of the nine islands they cover, plus three mainland destinations worth knowing about!
The largest of the Ionian islands and the one that most reliably turns first-time visitors into repeat ones. Kefalonia is big enough to feel like a country of its own: Mount Ainos rising in dark fir forest at the centre, the improbable turquoise of Myrtos beach far below its cliff road, the Venetian ruin of Assos on its little isthmus, and Fiskardo in the north, the only village on the island that survived the 1953 earthquake intact. Add the underground boat ride at Melissani cave, a proper local wine in Robola, and a food scene that has quietly become one of the best in the Ionian, and you have an island that rewards a car and a fortnight. It is also, of course, the setting of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin.
Homer’s island, and still the most literary place in the Ionian. Ithaka is small, green, mountainous and almost defiantly undeveloped, shaped like two islands joined by a narrow waist. The capital, Vathy, wraps around one of the finest natural harbours in the Mediterranean, and the northern villages of Kioni and Frikes are the sort of places where the evening entertainment is watching the yachts come in. Gidaki beach, reachable properly only by boat, is the reward for anyone who makes the effort. Come here if you want the Ionian at its slowest, and if the idea of arriving in Odysseus’s kingdom appeals more than a beach club.
Lefkada is the outlier: joined to the mainland by a causeway and floating bridge, so you can drive onto it, which makes it unusually easy to reach. What you come for is the west coast, a run of white cliffs and impossibly blue water that includes Porto Katsiki, Egremni and Kathisma, arguably the most photographed stretch of coastline in Greece. The east side is gentler and greener, with Nydri as the base for boat trips out to the small satellite islands, while Vasiliki in the south has been a serious windsurfing destination for decades. Agios Nikitas remains the prettiest village to stay in.
A twenty five minute ferry hop from Nydri and a different tempo entirely. Meganisi is tiny, with three villages, no crowds and no real nightlife to speak of, which is precisely the point. Spartochori sits on a bluff above its harbour, Vathy is a working fishing port with tavernas on the water, and Katomeri looks out over the channel towards Lefkada. The coastline is a sequence of small pebble coves and sea caves best explored with a hired motorboat, which the company can arrange alongside the villa. This is the island for people whose ideal holiday is a swim, a long lunch and absolutely no itinerary.
The smallest of the Ionian islands, and the most consistently charming. Paxos is essentially an olive grove floating in clear water, covered in some three hundred thousand trees and dotted with three harbour villages: Gaios, the capital, with its Venetian facades; Lakka in the north, curled around a sheltered bay; and Loggos, the smallest and prettiest of the three. There is no airport, which is a large part of why it has stayed as it is. Just south lies Antipaxos, uninhabited apart from vineyards, whose beaches at Vrika and Voutoumi have water that genuinely does look Caribbean in photographs because it genuinely does look like that in person.
The most cosmopolitan and the most historically layered of the group. Corfu Town is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and it feels less Greek than Venetian, with arcaded streets, two fortresses and a cricket pitch left over from the British protectorate. Beyond the town, the island splits into moods: Paleokastritsa’s dramatic bays on the west coast, the quiet olive-covered northeast that the Durrell family made famous, the Achilleion palace built for an Austrian empress, and mountain villages in the interior that see barely any visitors at all. Corfu is the easiest island here to reach from the UK and the best choice if you want a beach holiday with a proper city attached.
The busiest and most immediately fun of the Sporades. Skiathos packs more than sixty beaches into a small, pine-covered island, headlined by Koukounaries, a long golden crescent backed by umbrella pines and a lagoon, and Lalaria in the north, a wall of white cliffs and smooth stones reachable only by boat. The town is a genuinely lively one, all whitewashed lanes and waterfront bars, and the island is famous among aviation enthusiasts for an airport approach that brings aircraft in just above the heads of onlookers. Good for families by day and couples by night.
Skopelos is what Skiathos looks like with the volume turned down and the forest turned up. It is one of the greenest islands in Greece, covered in pine down to the shoreline, with a hillside capital of tiled roofs and small churches that is among the most beautiful town settings in the Aegean. Most visitors know it, whether they realise it or not, as the Mamma Mia island: the chapel of Agios Ioannis Kastri, perched on its rock above the sea, is the one at the top of those ninety nine steps. Glossa in the north is the quieter alternative base, and the island’s plums, dried and baked into everything, are a local obsession worth investigating.
The furthest out, the least developed and the most rewarding for anyone who likes their islands wild. Alonissos sits at the heart of the National Marine Park of Alonissos and the Northern Sporades, the largest marine protected area in Europe and the last real stronghold of the Mediterranean monk seal. The port of Patitiri is unpretentious, while the Old Village above it, abandoned after a 1965 earthquake and slowly restored, has views that go on for ever. Hiking trails cross the whole island and boat trips run out to the uninhabited islets of the park. Choose this one for walking, snorkelling, wildlife and silence.
Not every destination here is an island. Three mainland bases sit close enough to the ferries and the flight routes to pair naturally with a week at sea, whether you take one before the boat, after it, or instead of a second island.
Facing Paxos across the channel, is a candy-coloured amphitheatre of a town stacked beneath a Venetian castle, with a small island chapel sitting just offshore in the bay. Inland lie the gorge of the Acheron, the river the ancients believed led to the underworld, and the ruins of the Necromanteion where they came to consult the dead. It is the easiest place in Greece to combine a beach week with genuine antiquity, and the Paxos ferry leaves from close by.
The mythological home of the centaurs, is a mountain that happens to have coastline on both sides: chestnut and beech forest at the top, cobbled villages of stone and slate hanging off the slopes, and two entirely different seas below. The Aegean side has the dramatic beaches, the sheltered Pagasitic Gulf has the calm water and the fishing harbours. It is also the natural gateway to the Sporades, which makes it an obvious first half of a trip that finishes on Skiathos or Skopelos.
The practical advantages are the ones that show up later: a Greece-only team who have actually stayed in the properties they sell, full ATOL and ABTA protection, transfers that meet the flight rather than the timetable, and a car waiting at the airport. All twelve destinations sit side by side at Ionian & Aegean Island Holidays, where you can filter by island, by villa with a pool, or by what suits a family against what suits two people and a boat. Seasonal offers run through the year, with reductions on late availability, shoulder-season departures and newly added villas, and 2027 is already open for booking for anyone who prefers to have it settled early. Signing up to the newsletter carries a £100 discount for new customers.
Start with the islands at ionianislandholidays.com, or speak to the team on 020 8459 0777 and let them narrow it down for you!
Evangelos Kasapakis
Evangelos Kasapakis
