I have been going to Greece since I was nineteen, which is long enough that I have lost count of the ferries. More than fifteen islands by now, all of them different, all of them worth the trouble. And then somewhere in the middle of all that, Samos quietly became the one that feels like coming home.
My first proper introduction was in 1983. I was nineteen and crossing Europe by Interrail, and we took the boat from Brindisi over to Patras. What I remember most clearly is not the crossing but the people, who were friendly in a way that was entirely genuine, and it caught me off guard.
From Patras we went on to Athens, and in Athens I discovered meze, which is still one of the best things anybody has ever put in front of me. Then the ferry to Paros, and after that Santorini, where the white houses with their blue details sit above that impossible blue sea. I was in love with Greece more or less immediately, and I have never really recovered.
The first Samos
I did not get to Samos until 2002. Pythagorio charmed me straight away, and so did the northern coast, where the sea is a hard bright blue and the waves come in high.
Samos has a combination I have not often found elsewhere. The nature is beautiful. The harbour town is lively without ever tipping over into too much. And the island is small enough that you can be at the coast, in a village and up in the mountains on the same day without spending your holiday in the car.
There is also something genuinely unpolished about it. You stay in places where Greek people actually live, and you see ordinary life going on alongside the tourism, which gives the island a different feeling altogether. There is one more practical thing I appreciate more with every year that passes: the airport is small, and it is close.
I have been lucky with Greece and seen a good deal of it, and every island has its own character. Crete is beautiful, but so large that it sometimes hardly feels like an island at all. Lesbos has wonderful nature too, but everything is further apart. Lefkas is lovely and easy to enjoy, though I find less there of the thing that keeps pulling me back here.
Samos manages to be beautiful and manageable at the same time. You can spend the morning in Pythagorio, drive up into the mountains, find a small beach, sit somewhere for lunch, and still feel you are in the island rather than passing across it.
If someone were coming for the first time and actually wanted to know the place, I would tell them to hire a car. Drive north towards Kokkari. Go up into the mountain villages. See the waterfall near Karlovassi. Take your time over the southern and southeastern coasts. There are little beaches and quiet corners everywhere, if you are prepared to go and look for them.
Coming home
It took me a long time to understand that I wanted to keep coming back. Almost twenty years, in fact, between that first visit and the trip when I returned with Rocco.
We enjoyed the little harbour and the unhurried way everything happens there. Nothing seemed to need doing immediately. And when we came back together the second time, there was that strange, lovely feeling of already being at home.
That is what brings me back. Not one restaurant, not one beach. The feeling of arriving somewhere and knowing it.
Samos has changed over the years. It is busier and more expensive than it was. But the things that made me fall for it are still here: the unpolished quality, the nature, and above everything the friendliness of the people.
The Markou family
I first met the Markou family in 2025. The contact was warm from the very beginning, but there is one moment I keep returning to.
We went to see Katerina without her knowing we were coming. When she saw us she simply put her arms round us, and she was so plainly happy that we had turned up. It was a small thing. It told me a great deal about the kind of relationship we were starting to have.
What makes them special to me is that warmth, and also the fact that they have built the business as a family, across generations. There is something worth paying attention to in that kind of continuity.
And now, through Gaia Iluka, our family is connected to theirs in another way. I think it is particularly good for Max and Katerina, who are at a similar point in their lives, both with small children, both trying to build something of their own. Having everybody on Samos this time, and finally seeing them all in the same place, made that connection feel real rather than theoretical.
The olive trees
Olive trees have always been part of Greece to me. You see them everywhere, so often that you stop seeing them. But over the years I have come to understand more about what they actually mean to the people living among them.
When you get to know Greek families, you find that an olive grove can be part of a family's life for generations. A great many families have some connection to one, and for some of them it is still how they earn something through the winter.
I have always brought olive oil home from Greece. It was simply what I wanted in my suitcase after a holiday, long before there was any question of our family being connected to a producer on Samos.
The first time I used the Markou family's oil I thought exactly one thing, and it was: delicious.
It is different now. When you know where the oil comes from, and you know the family who make it, and you have stood about among their trees, the bottle arrives with a story attached to it. Knowing that Gaia Iluka comes from this particular corner of the world makes it matter more to me than it otherwise would.
A Greek table
Food has always been a large part of why I love Greece. I still remember finding meze as a nineteen-year-old, and food is still one of the things that keeps pulling me back.
There is something very natural about the way eating sits inside the day here. You eat with other people. You take your time over it. The meal becomes part of the day rather than something to be got through before the next thing starts.
Olive oil belongs in that world without any effort at all. It is part of what Greece tastes like.
For me, good olive oil and good flavour are the same conversation. And now, when I use the oil that comes from the Markou family and from Gaia Iluka, there is the added pleasure of knowing exactly where it came from and who made it.
The quietest part of Samos
My favourite moments on Samos are, honestly, very plain ones.
There is a small beach where I like to lie very early, before the day has properly started. I can be there by myself, listening to the sea, with nothing at all asking for my attention. If you asked me for the clearest picture I hold of this island, that would be it.
There is Tavern Endless too, in a beautiful spot with wonderful food, and there is Pythagorio and its harbour. But the places are only half of it. I come back for the feeling. For being somewhere familiar. For having time. For knowing the sea is close, that the food will be good, that people will be outside, and that the day does not have to be complicated.
If I could have one day over again it would probably be the first time Rocco came to Samos with me. I already loved the island. It was something else to watch him love it too.
After all these years of going to Greece, Samos has stopped being another island I know. It has become a second home, somewhere that gives me quiet and the particular comfort of familiarity. The nature is beautiful, the people are genuinely kind, and somewhere between the sea and the mountains and the food and the olive trees, the island has worked its way into my life.
Which is, in the end, the simplest reason to keep going back.
