I went to Kefalonia for a week at the beginning of July 2005. The weather was very hot and dry, about 39 degrees celsius, which for me was too hot. The locals said the weather was usually well over 40 degrees at that time of year.
I went to the resort of Skala with Kosmar. Airport transfer was just over an hour but take travelsick pills , as it's a journey with a lot of hairpin bends.
My accommodation was the Michalis Studios in Skala. These were quite basic with a kitchenette (no kettle, so bring a travel kettle), and separate bedroom and balcony. The only problem I found with the accommodation was that there was no air-conditioning and in July, that makes it impossible to sleep at night. There were a lot of mosquitoes in the room if you left the windows open (you had to do this as it was very stuffy), so bring one of those plug-in mosquito things.
Skala was an ideal resort for me. It is a purpose built resort but without all the tackiness and riff-raff. When I went, there were mostly couples and hardly any Germans, which for me is a good thing , as there were plenty of free sunbeds on the beach at all times of day. The beach is fantastic, really, really long. It's a mixture of sand and shingle. There are several groups of sunbeds and parasols but if you walk further down, you get empty sand all to yourself.
The restaurants in Skala are fantastic. I tried several different ones and my favourite was called "La Luna" , on the corner of the main road. The choices on the menu were huge, lots of variety and the portions were really big too. Prices were cheaper than the UK but I wouldn't describe it as cheap. I've found since the Euro came in, the Mediterranean has become more expensive.
Apart from the beach, some shops and a Roman villa with mosaics, there's not much to actually do in Skala, so we booked some excursions and hired a car.
The first excursion we went on was the "Three Island Cruise" which is being offered everywhere. I am always very wary of excursions because in the past, I've been on ones where they take you to shops trying to make you spend money and faff about at places you don't really want to be and it all ends up being a waste of time. Unfortunately, I was really annoyed to find out this excursion is the same. They advertise it as taking you to Lefkas, Skorpios and Meganissi. What they don't tell you is that the day is 12 hours long with 2 hours spent on a coach, 7 hours on a boat and only 3 hours on the islands.
The first stop was Meganissi, a very beautiful little island with amazing views. They only gave us an hour here. That was just long enough to walk up the 150 steps to the little white village on top for a drink. The 2nd stop was at Skorpios, which in my opinion was a waste of time. It's a private island and the boat can't dock, so all they did was stop for half an hour to let people swim off the side of the boat. Well, we could have had an extra half hour in Lefkas for that. Lefkas was the last stop where we got just 2 hours in the resort of Nidri. Again, two hours is not much time after you've stopped for lunch but by that time, we'd already been travelling for 6 hours, we didn't feel like doing much else. That excursion was 45 Euros each (not including lunch) and it was a rip-off in my opinion. I think they kept you on the boat so long to make you buy lots of food and drink from them.
The only other excursion we went on was to the island of Ithaka. We were dreading this, in case it was going to be a 12-hour waste of time like the last one, but it wasn't. It was a really good excursion. We booked "Ithaka with a difference" at a small agent on the main road in Skala. It was the only one being offered on a Saturday and it was the only one that spent time actually touring the island. A lot of the others were those dreaded boat trips just circling the island and not much else.
As this was a more unusual one, we were delighted to see the excursion consisted of only 6 couples. We had a small coach and we went on the regular ferry service from Sami to Ithaka. It took about 35 mins to get there and the coach came with us. On Ithaka, we visited a little monastery on a mountain, several mountain villages , the beautiful little port town of Kioni and the "capital", Vathy, with a beautiful horseshoe shaped bay. This excursion cost 29 Euros each (not including lunch) and this was good value for money.
We also hired a car for 80 Euros for 2 days and we visited the beautiful village of Assos in the north, the amazing Myrtos Beach and several mountain villages. The roads are mostly good if you stick to the main ones on the map, but it is very mountainous. We also went by car to Droganati Caves, which are an amazing site and Melassani Lake nearby. This is an underground Lake which is bright turquoise and very spectacular.
The only negative point I could think of was the airport. When we arrived, it was ok, but on the way home, they can't fit more than 2 flightloads of people inside, so everyone has to queue outside for ages. Then when you get inside, there is nowhere to sit.
Overall, a very enjoyable to first visit to Greece. Highly recommended!
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