From Athens we headed off towards the Greek islands, with Lesbos our next stop. The island sits in the northeastern Aegean, remarkably close to the Turkish coast, and our plan was fairly simple: spend a night or two there and then continue on to Turkey.

As usual, the plan was more of a suggestion than anything binding.

We boarded the overnight ferry along with what seemed to be half the Greek army. There was a large group of very young Greek soldiers travelling through the islands, many of them heading towards Samos, another island sitting very close to the Turkish coast.

Seeing so many young soldiers being moved out towards the eastern islands was a reminder that relations between Greece and Turkey were still tense at the time. On a map the islands seem scattered comfortably through the Aegean, but when you are actually travelling between them you realise just how close some of them are to the Turkish mainland.

The soldiers themselves were very young and seemed rather more interested in chatting, eating and finding somewhere to sleep than in international relations.

The ferry was crowded and there was very little in the way of comfortable sleeping space. After wandering around for a while looking for somewhere remotely suitable, I eventually gave up and stretched out on the floor.

This seemed to seriously concern the young soldiers.

Every so often one of them would appear beside me offering something they apparently thought might improve the situation. At various points I was offered food that looked very homemade, a phone charging cable and several other useful items that had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I was lying on the floor.

They were very sweet about it.

I tried to explain that I was perfectly happy where I was, although clearly my definition of perfectly happy and theirs differed considerably.

Eventually they accepted that the strange Australian woman was apparently going to sleep on the floor whether anybody liked it or not.

So I did.

I woke, somewhat stiff and considerably less elegant than when I had started, as the ferry was pulling into Lesbos at around seven in the morning.

We climbed off expecting this to be another short stop before Turkey.

Almost immediately, we liked it.

There was something very easy about Lesbos. It felt relaxed without being sleepy and, unlike some of the more famous Greek islands, it did not seem to have rearranged itself entirely for visitors.

People were simply getting on with their lives.

We found ourselves a self-contained apartment at Thalia’s Garden, with a balcony overlooking a lovely garden. It was comfortable, quiet and had everything we needed, which immediately made the idea of leaving after two nights seem slightly unnecessary.

We unpacked properly.

This is always dangerous.

Two nights became a few more, then a few more after that, and before long we had been there for around ten days.

Most evenings we cooked dinner at the apartment and sat outside on the balcony with a bottle of locally made ouzo.

By this point in Greece we had become rather fond of ouzo.

Perhaps a little too fond.

Lesbos has a particularly strong association with the drink and produces some of Greece’s best-known ouzos, so naturally we felt obliged to investigate the matter properly.

We took the responsibility seriously.

Evenings became very easy. Cook something simple, sit outside as the heat disappeared from the day, pour an ouzo and decide there was absolutely no reason to be anywhere else.

It was a routine we adapted to with surprising speed.

What we particularly liked about Lesbos was that it still felt like a real island rather than a holiday resort with a Greek theme.

Local families ate in the restaurants, people went to work, old men sat around cafés and nobody seemed particularly interested in whether we were being suitably entertained.

This suited us perfectly.

We ate extremely well.

The restaurants tended to be simple family-run places serving the sort of food we had come to love in Greece — grilled meat, seafood, vegetables, salads, feta, good bread and plenty of olive oil.

Nothing needed foam, micro-herbs or an explanation from the waiter.

It arrived on a plate.

We ate it.

It was excellent.

There was also, inevitably, more ouzo.

Lesbos is a large island and there was far more to it than we could ever have seen during our stay. Mountains rise through the interior, olive groves cover huge areas of countryside and villages are scattered across the hills and coastline. Mytilene, the capital, has a busy harbour and layers of history that stretch back thousands of years.

We explored, but we had no great urge to race around ticking things off a list.

After weeks of moving constantly from one place to another, Lesbos became somewhere we could simply stop.

We wandered around.

We sat in cafés.

We ate.

We cooked dinner.

We drank ouzo on the balcony.

It was not an especially demanding schedule.

And perhaps that was why we liked it so much.

There was no single great sight or dramatic adventure that defined our time there. Nothing particularly went wrong, nobody chased a moving train and there were no deranged taxi drivers attempting to dismantle their dashboard while driving us through the mountains.

For once, travelling was remarkably straightforward.

We simply enjoyed being there.

Eventually, of course, Turkey was still waiting on the other side of the water and we knew we had to continue.

By then our original two-night stop had stretched to around ten days and we were genuinely reluctant to leave.

Lesbos had not needed to do very much to win us over.

Good food, friendly people, a comfortable apartment, a balcony and a reliable supply of ouzo had proved more than sufficient.

We arrived expecting to stay for two nights.

Ten days later, we were already talking about coming back.