Greece
Ithaca
Olive terraces tumble to a wine-dark sea on the island Odysseus spent ten years reaching.
The harbour at Vathy sits at the end of a bay so deep and enclosed it feels like a lake — still water, terracotta rooftops, olive terraces climbing on three sides. Odysseus spent ten years reaching this place, and arriving by ferry you understand what the fuss was about.
Ithaca's claim as Odysseus's homeland has driven digs since the 19th century — the Aetos ridge has produced Bronze Age walls and Mycenaean-era finds, though the palace itself stays unlocated. Vathy, the main town, sits so deep inside its bay that it feels lake-locked. Around it the island stays small-scale: olive terraces, a scatter of coves, and villages that empty and refill with the ferries.
Solo
Walking the Aetos ridge the ridge where the Bronze Age town stood, the literary festival in July, and sitting at the harbour with a copy of Cavafy's Ithaka and nowhere to be.
Couple
A bottle of Ithakan wine on the harbour wall at dusk, the olive-grove walks through the interior, and the romantic weight of the most storied homecoming in literature.
- The homecoming myth is the itinerary — you sail in, as the story says he did.
- Vathy's bay closes around the town like a lake; arriving by ferry is itself the event.
- Bronze Age walls stand on the Aetos ridge — the Mycenaean world the epic remembers, palace or not.
- The island's thyme-and-oregano honey is the take-home — small producers, small jars.
Savoro fish — fried, then marinated in vinegar, garlic and rosemary — an Ionian preservation trick turned delicacy.
Rovani, Ithaca's celebration sweet of rice baked with honey and cinnamon, appears at weddings and name days.
Arniston
South Africa
A tidal cave hides beneath whitewashed cottages, broad enough for an ox wagon.
Sidi Ifni
Morocco
Spain left on the last day of June 1969, and the Art Deco is still standing.
Mangue Seco
Brazil
Dunes advancing over the coconut groves, eight-metre palms buried to the tips of their fronds.
Mar de Ansenuza
Argentina
South America's largest salt lake turns pink with flamingos against a soybean horizon.
Nafplio
Greece
Stone steps climb to a Venetian sea fortress above a harbour of bobbing fishing caïques.
Prespa Lakes
Greece
Byzantine hermitages painted on cave walls above a lake shared by three countries.
Ioannina
Greece
Ali Pasha's lake fortress — silversmith workshops and Ottoman mosques on an island reached by boat.
Kardamyli
Greece
The village where Patrick Leigh Fermor stopped walking and never left, Taygetos peaks framing every sunset.