"The quiet, wild islands, yes," says Vicky. "But for what it is, Santorini, too. I love all the hotels on the caldera there. I don't pay any attention to the design, the service—anything except the view."

The view is breathtaking: from atop volcanic cliffs, a nearly enclosed natural harbor far below. But it is not enough to make everyone love the island.

"Santorini?" responds Sotiris, in mock horror. "On Santorini, so many hotels do everything in bright colors now. What if they give me the pink room and I don't like pink? It ruins my holiday."

He prefers the island where he lives, Mykonos, whose residents apparently believe that they have a subtler, more refined fashion sense. Shades of pale do seem to dominate hotel decor there, as I observed during a recent stay at one of the more design driven, the Belvedere, where everything is so white on white, including the staff uniforms, that you practically have to identify where the waiters are by the sound of their voices.

The favorite-island question arose when I mentioned that on numerous trips to the Greek Islands I had visited almost all of the sixty or so linked by ferry, and my tablemates were curious to know which one I liked best. But as with my waiter and the desserts his mother and father made, I have found that choosing one favorite is impossible. Sometimes I want sybaritic liveliness, and that brings to mind a particular island—Mykonos perhaps, with its glamorous crowds that party till dawn. Or sometimes I want to get away from it all, and that recalls another island, such as rocky Folegandros, which has a white-cube village, Chora (literally town in Greek), that is as pretty as any in the Aegean. The island is two hours from Santorini, yet there are so few ferries that only the most determined travelers ever reach it.

The major groupings within the Greek Islands offer distinct qualities too. The postcard-blue water and white-cube architecture of the Cyclades; the feeling, in the Dodecanese—with the Turkish coast often in sight—of being on the threshold of Asia. The Sporades' image of hillsides clad in pine boughs. The day-tripping nearness to Athens of the Argo-Saronic Islands. The remoteness, as if they belong to their own worlds, of the big islands of the northeastern Aegean and the even bigger island (far to the south) of Crete. And in a separate sea altogether, on the west side of the Greek mainland, the Ionian Islands, where the architecture is often Venetian and the breakfasts English. Each interest, each taste, each mood, brings another favorite island forward; and of course interests, tastes, and moods change. On this journey, I am visiting many of my past favorites and seeking to discover, after twenty-five years of enjoying their charms, if time has changed them, too.

Best Beaches

My favorite beaches on Skiathos are still pleasing, especially Koukounaries, whose wall of pines offers a protective shade I little appreciated in the past. It is not just the beaches of Skiathos that draw me, though. Over the years, I have happily baked on many a Greek island's strand, among the best of them Mykonos's frenetic Paradise and Super Paradise, and those of some of the Ionian Islands. Mykonos's pleasant sandy beaches are about sea and be seen, which is as good as any reason to go, although it has gotten extremely crowded there. The Ionians have some of the most dramatic beaches, often set against high backdrops of surrounding rock. Porto Katsiki Beach on Lefkas is like that, as is Shipwreck Beach on Zakynthos, where as a non-smoker I take pleasure in knowing that its wrecked ship, cast up on the sand in 1983, was carrying contraband cigarettes.