The Best Islands That Aren't Hawaii

Bigger than any other island in the Mediterranean, and it behaves like a country rather than a resort. Greek settlers built temples across it, several of them in the Valley of the Temples at Agrigento, and Mount Etna, 3,403 m and still active, sits behind Catania as weather rather than scenery. The Allied invasion landed on 10 July 1943. Total area is 25,711 square kilometers, and a week does not touch it.

Stretching 456 kilometers end to end and 100 wide at its widest, it carries a provincial capital, surf towns and a mountain interior in the same 32,100 square kilometers. Strathcona Provincial Park alone covers 2,500 of them near the center, enough that a week here can skip saltwater entirely. Nearly 400,000 people live around Victoria; Tofino, on the far side, does not.

Rising about six kilometers off the Atlantic floor, the largest island of its archipelago is the top of a submerged shield volcano, and it climbs hard once you land: the central ridge reaches 1,862 m at Pico Ruivo. Its 740.7 square kilometers held 245,595 people in 2021, which is crowded for something this vertical.

Ringed by 1,000 km of coastline with roughly 120 summits over 2,000 m stacked behind it, and Monte Cinto topping out at 2,706 m. The GR20 runs the spine, a mountain traverse and not a coastal amble. An independent Corsican republic was proclaimed in 1755 under Pasquale Paoli and lasted until 1769. The memory is load-bearing, and Maison Bonaparte in Ajaccio is a museum now.

Volcanoes down the middle, paddy water shared through the subak irrigation system, and about 86% of the population practicing Balinese Hinduism. Tourism climbed after Ngurah Rai International Airport opened in 1970, and the southern beaches have been paying for that ever since. Go up to Ubud instead: the town is treated as the island's cultural center, and its temple calendar runs whether visitors turn up or not.

Settlers arrived in 1427, making this the second island Gonçalo Velho Cabral found to be colonized, and the volcano has been editing the place ever since: an eruption blew out the crater at Sete Cidades between 1439 and 1444. Around 140,000 people now share 760 square kilometers, 45,000 of them in Ponta Delgada, and the rest is crater lake and pasture.

Since 1995 the Skye Bridge has tied it to the mainland, which changed both who comes and how often. The Old Man of Storr pulls more than a quarter-million visitors a year on its own, so go at seven in the morning or accept the queue. Dunvegan Castle has been the Clan MacLeod seat since the 13th century, and the Black Cuillin carry twelve Munros.

Coral roughly 90 m thick is what the whole 439 square kilometers is built from, reefs grown above the sediment. Twenty-one miles long, fourteen across at the widest, and one airport at Grantley Adams. Order cou-cou and flying fish with spicy gravy, the national dish, and reason enough to eat somewhere with a fryer instead of a view. Crop Over dates to 1687 and came back in 1974.

Zanzibar's main island answers to a name most visitors never learn, and it held 896,721 people at the 2012 census. Zanzibar City is where everything arrives, and the historic core of Stone Town sits inside it. The local Zanzibari government works out of there, so the alleys are a working town and not a set. The Zanzibar red colobus is on the mammal list too.

Everyone comes for the caldera rim, and the caldera earns it: the Minoan eruption around 3,600 years ago tore the center out of the island and left the cliff you are standing on. Excavation at Akrotiri began in 1967 under Spyridon Marinatos, and the buried town is the best-known Minoan site outside Crete. Cruise passengers still land at Skala and ride the cable car up.

Package tourism arrived with the airport, built in 1989, and the beaches have been busy ever since. One 51 km road encircles the lowland coast, which keeps the geography simple: pick a beach and everything else is a scooter ride. Nathon on the west side is the original capital and still holds the government offices. The island covers 228.7 square kilometers, second in Thailand after Phuket.

Naples' other island, and the one not run on day-trippers. A rock off the east side carries the Castello Aragonese, first fortified in 474 BC by Hiero I of Syracuse and now the most visited monument here. Mount Epomeo tops out at 788 m, and the last eruption, in 1302, pushed the Arso flow to the northeast coast. The same volcanism heats the springs at the Bay of Sorgeto.

An hour's ferry from Long Beach or San Pedro drops you somewhere that behaves nothing like the county it belongs to. The Catalina Casino opened on 29 May 1929, built with Wrigley money, and Philip Wrigley later deeded 42,135 acres to the Catalina Island Conservancy in 1975, which is why the interior is bison and scrub. Private cars face a 25-year wait list.

About 60% of it has been Virgin Islands National Park since 1956, which is the entire reason it looks nothing like St. Thomas across the channel. Ferries run hourly from Red Hook. Trunk Bay is the one on the postcards and it deserves the reputation; Annaberg, built in 1731, is the sugar works above the north shore, the history the beach leaves out.

Cars have been prohibited since 1898, so the traffic is bicycles, horses and the occasional ambulance. Arch Rock, a natural limestone arch standing 146 feet above the ground, is the geology everyone photographs, and M-185 loops the shoreline as the only US state highway with no motor vehicles on it. The Grand Hotel opened in 1887. Visitors get called fudgies and they earn it.

Tiberius moved here permanently in AD 27 and governed the Roman Empire from the island until his death in AD 37; Villa Jovis, one of the best-preserved Roman villas in Italy, is up on the cliffs. From Marina Grande the Capri funicular climbs to the Piazzetta, where most of the day-trip crowd stops moving. Walk on toward the Belvedere of Tragara and the island changes character.

Right on the edge of Tarutao National Marine Park, close to the Malaysian border, and small enough that the beaches connect on foot. Walking Street cuts between them and becomes a seafood grill after dark; sunrise happens on Sunrise Beach and the nightlife on Pattaya Beach. Urak Lawoi' sea people settled it first. From mid-June to mid-October the only way in is a speedboat from Pak Bara.