Lesvos

Ayvalık takes about 90 minutes in our timetable, with three sailings each way; the fastest craft do the crossing in well under an hour, and in high summer the link runs several times a day. There is a second crossing to Aliağa at around 110 minutes.

Compare that with 12 hours to Piraeus. If you are coming from outside Greece, flying to İzmir and crossing from Ayvalık is a serious alternative to routing through Athens, and it is not the option the booking sites put in front of you.

Lesvos has something almost no other Aegean island has: a direct sailing to Thessaloniki, around 13 hours with Blue Star.

For anyone based in northern Greece, or coming overland from the Balkans, this removes the entire journey down to Athens. It is a single sailing in our timetable rather than a frequent service, but it exists, and most itineraries never consider it.

Chios is the strongest link — 8 sailings southbound at about 2 h 25 m, on Blue Star and Hellenic Seaways. Together with Samos further south, the three islands form a line rather than a cluster.

See the Chios guide: the two islands run 19 sailings between them across both directions, which is frequent enough that you do not have to decide in advance which one you sleep on.

Two things, and neither is a beach. Lesvos is the home of ouzo — three of the five best-selling Greek brands are distilled here, mostly around Plomari in the south. And the petrified forest at Sigri is the second largest in the world, a UNESCO-protected monument of fossilised trees standing where they grew twenty million years ago, with a natural history museum on site.

Add Molyvos in the north, a castle village on a headland, and Mytilene's own neoclassical waterfront, and the island rewards depth rather than a checklist.

The Piraeus crossing is a night at sea. Deck tickets exist and are cheap; on a twelve-hour sailing they are a poor trade, particularly if you are picking up a hire car on arrival.

Book the cabin, and if you are travelling in high summer book it early — the North Aegean routes carry residents and freight as much as visitors, and they do not have the seasonal surge capacity the Cyclades routes do.

Mytilene if you want the city, the ferry and the museums. Molyvos and Petra in the north if you want the postcard. Plomari and the southern coast for the ouzo country and the quieter beaches. Skala Eressou in the west if you are heading for the far end anyway.

What does not work is trying to combine two of those in a short stay. The island is too big and the roads are too slow for that to be anything but driving.

Piraeus and Chios sailings run all year because the island has a resident economy. The Turkish crossings are concentrated from spring to autumn and peak between June and September, when Ayvalık runs at its fullest.

May and September are the best of it — the crossings are all running, the driving is comfortable, and the island is at a scale where the absence of crowds actually shows.