Lefkada, Greece

Normally I curate all of our trips myself through endless research, but on this particular summer, I wanted to book a week with no room for error and full concierge services, so turned to luxury villa company The Thinking Traveller. This was our third holiday in Greece, and I chose the villa before the location, which turned out to be Lefkada, a Greek island in the Ionian Sea, accessible to the mainland via a causeway bridge.

This summer was the hottest Greece has experienced in over 40 years. After exploring Athens in excruciating heat, we rented a car and drove the very scenic five hours to the mountainous, green island of Lefkada, with beaches that edge the bluest of waters, earning it the nickname, “the Caribbean of Greece.” Our stunning villa, Cape Lougi, was in Lefkada’s southeast, a 15-minute drive from the nearest beach and seaside tavernas and across the water from the island of Meganisi.

We were greeted at the villa by Cora, its manager, with a hamper of coffee, fruits and other yummy eats and together with the rest of our group—the villa was big enough for our family of three, as well as my cousin and her family—we immediately began relaxing in the villa’s stunning landscaped gardens and epic pool.One of our favorite beaches on the island was Porto Katsiki, a beach with clear azure waters flanked by chalk-white cliffs. Ammouso is another beautiful little pebbly beach with an excellent taverna.

Through The Thinking Traveller I booked a full-day sailing trip around Lefkada, with a swim on Jackie Onassis’s famous beach on the island of Skorpios and a stop to explore the quaint port of Vathi in Meganisi. We also wound up drinking rum cocktails at a reggae beach bar called “Jammin in Paradise,” then swimming at Fanari beach—as a Caribbean girl from the island of Trinidad, this was an unexpected treat. For dinner we loved Seaside, a modern Greek restaurant with locally sourced ingredients right on the water, where Kostas greeted us warmly each time–affirming the sense we had of Lefkada as one of the most authentic, low-key and majestic places we’d been in Greece.