Not a soul in sight at quiet Levrosos beach on Egali Bay in Amorgos
Category: Greek Islands beaches
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Greece holiday 2011: Arriving at Ios
The golden sandy beach near Gialos Port on Ios
Hello Gialos: When I told a friend back in the spring that we would be going to Ios, she wondered why. “It’s ugly!” she scowled. “Every time the ferry stops there on our way to Santorini, I think the island looks like a giant lump of rock.” We had seen Ios several times from ferries, too, but never considered it “ugly.” It always looked, to us, like a typical Cycladic island: a rugged landscape of rocky, almost barren mountains dotted with whitewashed cube-shaped buildings; beautiful beaches on sun-soaked bays along the coast; and gorgeous blue waters of the Aegean Sea all around. When we finally stepped onto Ios soil for the first time ever back in May, the island appeared much nicer than we had expected. Given its notorious reputation as a non-stop summer party place for kids in their 20s, we had thought Ios would be somewhat scruffy and dumpy, but it was anything but. In fact, it looked rather pretty.
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Cool pools: The Coco beach club pool & bar above infamous Super Paradise beach on Mykonos
Coco Beach Club‘s pool overlooks Super Paradise beach and bay
Beach view: Ask someone if they can name a “party beach” on Mykonos, and there’s a good chance they’ll mention Super Paradise. It’s not surprising, since Super Paradise has been one of the island’s most popular beaches for decades. But many people still think Super Paradise is a hedonistic destination primarily for gays and nudists, along with a smaller crowd of open-minded straights. Though it was the top Mykonos “gay” beach from the 1970s through the 1990s, times have changed and most of the gay scene has moved farther down the coast to Elia beach. Nowadays, Super Paradise draws a mainly straight crowd, but still sees its fair share of gay visitors — as well as beachgoers who love to frolic in the sun and sea au naturel.
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Cool pools: The curvaceous chilly swimming pool at the Rodos Palladium on Kallithea beach, Rhodes
A late afternoon view of the huge free-form swimming pool at the Rodos Palladium. The pool is just steps from Kallithea beach, 8 km from Rhodes Town.
Hot and cold: The biggest hotel swimming pool we’ve seen in the Greek Islands — so far — was the large free-form pool at the five-star Rodos Palladium hotel, just a stone’s throw from Kallithea beach on Rhodes.
We stayed at the Rodos Palladium on an island-hopping package tour during our first-ever trip to Greece back in 2004. The swimming pool and its spacious deck looked quite impressive from our hotel room balcony, and reminded us of some of the huge free-form pools we’ve enjoyed at resorts in the Caribbean and Central America. The big difference was the water temperature. Whereas we spent hours in the pool on our holidays to the southern destinations, we couldn’t even get in the pool at the Rodos Palladium because the water was so incredibly cold! Even after laying in the sun for a couple of hours, the water was too cold to bear. We weren’t the only ones who couldn’t get in — very few other guests could tolerate the cold temperature, either. Only a couple of people braved the chilly water, and didn’t stay in it for long.
The hotel also has an indoor heated pool, but the water temperature there was at the other extreme — way too hot! It felt like swimming in a giant hot tub, and the hot water wasn’t the least bit refreshing. We didn’t get any photos of the indoor pool — the pool room was so steamy, it fogged up my camera lens — but we did take several pics of the outdoor pool, which appear below:
Looking across part of the outdoor swimming pool toward two of the Rodos Palladium hotel buildings …
… and looking to the right, from the same position, at another hotel wing
Our hotel room balcony view of the Rodos Palladium swimming pool. Note the rows of dozens of lounge chairs and umbrellas at the far end of the pool.
The circular bar in the middle of the Rodos Palladium pool
A view of the Rodos Palladium swimming pool and beach at dusk
An afternoon view of the pool. Three people are visible in the pool, probably the most we saw in the bone-chilling-cold water at any one time — even though the air temperature was rather toasty, hitting the high 20s Celsius.
