The poet Odysseas Elytis, born here and later a Nobel laureate, said his island was shaped like a plane-tree leaf. Look at a map of Lesbos and you see what he meant: two seawater gulfs bite deep into the south coast through narrow openings, splitting the land into lobes around their still water. This is the northernmost of the East Aegean islands, close enough to Turkey that the mainland mountains stand on the horizon, and large enough that no single drive shows you all of it. The east is olive groves and pine; the far west is bare rock and low scrub. Between them lies an island that rewards the traveler willing to wander.
Most visitors arrive at Mytilene's airport, named for Elytis, about eight kilometers south of the capital. Olympic Air and Aegean fly daily from Athens, with regular links to Thessaloniki, Chios, Lemnos, and Crete, plus summer charters from abroad. By sea, ferries from Piraeus take eight to nine hours via Chios, so an overnight sailing is the kinder choice; a short car ferry also crosses from Ayvalık on the Turkish coast in about ninety minutes. Once here, rent a car or a scooter. Local buses run to the bigger villages from the station in Mytilene, and taxis use the meter, but the island's pleasure is the open road. The mountain routes are good and not too challenging, and marked hiking trails thread between the villages for those who would rather walk.
Lesbos claims ouzo as its own, and the claim has weight. On the south coast, where the two gulfs open to the sea, sits Plomari, the spirit's spiritual home, ringed by distilleries whose names travel far beyond the island. Order it the local way, poured over ice until the clear liquid turns milky white, and drink it slowly alongside small plates of seafood. The island runs on this unhurried sociability. Coffee, the islanders say, is more available than water, served at one to five euros in every village kafeneio. Beyond ouzo, Lesbos is famous for its pottery, centered in the villages of Agiasos on the slopes of Mount Olympos and Mandamados in the northeast, where working ceramists still turn and fire their wares as they have for generations.
The capital, Mytilene, layers its history in plain sight: a Genoese-era castle crowns the old upper port of Epano Skala, mansions line the airport road at Sourada, and the baroque church of Agios Therapon anchors the bustling market street of Ermou. To the north, Molyvos, the ancient Mithymna, climbs to a Gattilusi castle above stone houses and is the island's most loved destination. Inland villages reward detours of their own. Agiasos clings to the wooded northeast slope of Olympos; Skala Sykamineas, a tiny fishing harbor on the north coast, is famous for its fish tavernas and for the chapel of the Mermaid Madonna that the writer Stratis Myrivilis made legendary. Near Molyvos, the open-air thermal springs at Eftalou let you soak in hot water and cool off in the sea, back and forth, as long as you like.
The far west is a different island. Where the east is green with olive and pine, the rocky western tip hides one of Greece's strangest landscapes: a petrified forest, the trunks of ancient trees turned to stone by volcanic ash millions of years ago. The Natural History Museum near Sigri, often called one of the best museums in the country, makes sense of it. The center of the island offers a quieter wonder. The Gulf of Kalloni, the larger of the two, draws birdwatchers from across Europe to its shallows and saltpans, where flamingos and migrating waterfowl gather in season. And on the south coast lies Vatera, one of the longest beaches in all of Greece, a single sweep of sand that seems to run on past the limit of an afternoon's walk.
Lesbos sits in the northeast Aegean at roughly 39.17°N, 26.33°E, projecting from the Asia Minor mainland; the Turkish coast lies just a few kilometers east. From the air the island's defining features are the two deep gulfs cutting into the south coast (Kalloni and Gera) that give it its leaf shape, and the elevation rising near 1000 m at Mount Lepetymnos in the north and Mount Olympos in the south. The airport is Mytilene International (Odysseas Elytis), ICAO LGMT, in the far southeast about 8 km south of the capital. Note: do not photograph military installations on the island.