Island Hopping from Lefkada

Getting There

Most cruises leave from Nydri, which is about a 20 minute drive from Lefkada town. We covered this easily with our moped, and it was a very pretty drive there.

It’s easy to find the right boat on the Nydri waterfront. I bought my tickets online but I wonder if you could get a better deal buying them in person from a salesman. Something to consider!

The Cruise

The cruise leaves at 9:30am and goes until 6:30pm—a very long day! They sell drinks, snacks, and meals on board, but we brought some cookies and water from a convenience store before boarding too.

The boat visits seven different locations, which appealed to me because I thought it would be nice to see a lot of different things at once. Retrospectively I don’t think this was the right move, and it would’ve been better to see fewer place, and spend more time at each place. But we’ll get to that later.

The boat was a little run down, but clean and the bathrooms were fine. We bought some iced coffee from the diner and it tasted good.

There were a lot of people on the boat but it wasn’t hard to find a place to sit with a good view. I took a few naps during the longer rides between stops.

Egremni

The first stop is Egremni. The website calls this a “sandy beach” which was confusing because the beach is made out of pebbles and stones. Which was fine! We thought this was cool.

We stopped here for about an hour. We didn’t much feel like swimming so we built a little stone monument with some of the rocks., which was very entertaining for us. May it last 1,000 years!

The water and scenery was beautiful and it was nice to be outside in the good weather.

Porto Katsiki

This beach is supposed to the best one in Lefkada, and indeed it looks amazing. The boat did not go on the beach though, and anchored just outside. People could jump into the water from the boat, which we didn’t feel like doing but we did enjoy the spectacular view of the island.

If I come back to Lefkada I think taking a car (or higher powered moped) here would be a very nice day trip.

We also got to see the light house of Lefkada on Cape Ducato as we rounded the island to get to these beaches. It looked very pretty!

Kefalonia

After Porto Katsiki we navigated to Kefalonia, another beautiful island popular with tourists. I was excited to see a small part of it when we landed in Fiskardo, the main port town.

We only had an hour to hang out and we got lunch at Parnassos. Sev and I each had crepes. Neither of us really loved it but the location was very nice right by the water, and I liked throwing bits of my crepe to the eager fish waiting at the water’s edge.

It’s hard to find a good place to eat though because we had limited time and there were many tourist cruises dropping people off at the same time, so a lot of places were full.

We left after lunch, but I remain curious about Kefalonia and would be interested in seeing more one day!

Ithaka

As a respecter of the Western canon, I was particularly excited to see Ithaka, an island on our cruise itinerary.

This is allegedly where Odysseus was from and where he set off for his epic voyage (the actual location is disputed, and some scholars even think the real Ithaka might have been located on Lefkada).

We made it here and disembarked around 3:30 and by then I was sufficiently hot that I wanted to go for a swim.

The water felt amazing and looked beautiful, there was also a cool little cave where people took pictures, and Severn climbed on top. I really enjoyed this part, and we stayed for about a half hour.

The Cave of Papanikolis

The boat got pretty close to this unique rock formation with crystal clear waters, the Cave of Papanikolis. It’s the second largest cave in Greece.

The cave became famous in World War II for being a secret hiding place for a submarine, called Papnikolis. But ships had been using the cave to shelter from inclement weather for hundreds of years.

We couldn’t go swimming here but the boat went partially inside and we got to take a good look around and get some photos.

Scorpios-Sparti-Kastri-Madouri

Then we drove by a few more little islands, including three, Scoprios, Sparti, and Kastri, that were owned by billionaire Greek business magnate Aristotle Onassis, who also married former American First Lady Jackie Kennedy.

We couldn’t disembark or go swimming near these islands but it was interesting to see how the wealthy people live in secluded luxury.

The island of Madouri is privately owned, and was the birthplace of Greek poet Aristotle’s Valaoritis. I wasn’t familiar with his work, but the island looked cool from the boat.

Conclusion

We got back at 6:30 and were quite tired from our long day of site-seeing.

As stated earlier, there were probably too many locations and we would’ve been better suited for a cruise with fewer, higher-quality experiences.

However, I did get some good ideas for places I’d like to explore further, like Kefalonia and Port Kasiki, which I might not have considered otherwise.

Overall I would advise my readers to check out some of the other options beyond Eptanisos and Makedonia, the other major Lefkada cruise line with basically the same itinerary. You can even rent smaller boats to take you to Kefalonia or other islands, which might be cheaper and more fun.