Category: Greek Islands hotels

Greece holiday 2011: Checking in at the family-run Hermes Hotel at Agios Ioannis on Ios

Hermes Hotel is conveniently located at Agios Ioannis on Ios, short walking distance from Chora and gorgeous Mylopotas beach and bay

Comfortable and convenient: In my post on August 17 2011, I described arriving at Ios for the first time, and getting a brief glimpse of the island’s port area, Yialos. Here, I’ll pick up where I left off.

It was late afternoon and clouds were slowly starting to dissipate as a major thunderstorm system moved across the Aegean. It had been unseasonably chilly and windy when our ferry left Mykonos several hours earlier, and the highspeed catamaran was thrashed with driving rain almost the entire trip to Ios. Things looked bleak, especially when we stopped en route at Paros. Rain was pelting against the ferry windows so hard we could barely see the port village of Paroikia, but we did see incessant lightning strikes and hear thunder booming ferociously. Fortunately, by the time the Flying Cat 4 entered the harbour at at Yialos port on Ios, the storm system was clearing and the weather held better promise for our five-day stay on the island.

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October 21, 2011
The Naxos Imperial Resort’s Figure 8-shaped swimming pool

This pic from the Naxos Imperial Resort & Spa website shows the Figure 8 shape of the hotel’s swimming pool above Agios Prokopios beach

Swim in circles: One of the big changes we noticed on Naxos during our May 2009 visit was a brand-new resort just a few steps down the road from the Lianos Village Hotel, where we have enjoyed staying on our last two Naxos holidays.

We could see that finishing touches were still being applied to the five-star Naxos Imperial Resort & Spa, which had been built during the winter of 2008-2009. But the large luxury resort (it has a main building with restaurants, bars and spa facilities, plus six separate wings with single, double, triple and quadruple hotel rooms) didn’t appear to have any guests at the time. At least, there were none that we could see.

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September 30, 2011
Cool pools: Splash and dive through the ancient Portara monument at the Naxos Beach II Hotel

The bottom of the oval swimming pool at the Naxos Beach II Hotel is decorated with a large illustration of the Portara, the island’s most famous monument

Good swims: Our all-time favourite swimming pool in the Greek Islands is the only one in which we actually got to spend quite a bit of time splashing around without feeling like we were going to freeze. As I’ve mentioned before, we usually find the water in hotel swimming pools too chilly for swimming when we travel to Greece in the spring. We’ve found some pools to be too cold to our liking even in late September, too! But we didn’t have any complaints about water temperature in 2005 when we stayed at the Naxos Beach II Hotel during our first visit to Naxos.

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September 1, 2011
Our windowless cave-style Santorini hotel room with its low ‘hobbit’ door

Room 119 at Grotto Villas/Cliff Side Suites in Firostefani had no window …

… and the door was only 5 feet 5 inches tall. Don’t forget to duck!

Head knocker: Santorini is world-renowned for spectacular scenery, and its magnificent caldera views drew us back to the island three consecutive years in a row. We just couldn’t get enough of the breathtaking landscape, colourful clifftop villages and endless views of the gorgeous blue Aegean Sea. So imagine our reaction when we arrived at the Grotto Villas/Cliff Side Suites hotel in Firostefani to discover that our assigned room — #119 — didn’t even have a window!

That happened back in 2006, but I still remember our surprise and disappointment like it were yesterday. It would be bad enough to be assigned a windowless hotel room anywhere when you’re travelling on vacation. But on Santorini of all islands? There ought to be a law against it! To add insult to injury, the room door had a low frame, and I kept banging the top of my head on it whenever I went in and out. I’m only 5’7, and until I arrived at Grotto Villas/Cliff Side Suites I never expected that I would ever be too tall to walk into a hotel room while standing upright!

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August 28, 2011
Sea, sun, sand, drinks & dining at Platis Gialos, the popular Mykonos “family” beach

A hotel and resort area just a 15-minute bus ride from Mykonos Town, Platis Gialos is one of the most popular beaches on Mykonos island …

… with hundreds of rental sunbeds and a good selection of bars and tavernas at the front of hotels stretching along the sandy beach

Family friendly: If you want to spend time with your kids on a beautiful Mykonos beach that has a good selection of restaurants, bars and water sports facilities, but none of the raucous and raunchy partying that some of the island’s beaches are famous for, then you’ve got two excellent choices on the island’s south coast.

You could visit Ornos beach, which I profiled in my July 24 2011 post, or you could go to Platis Gialos beach. They’re not the only family-friendly beaches on Mykonos, of course, but they are two of the easiest to reach from Mykonos Town — especially if you don’t plan to rent a vehicle during your island visit and will be relying solely on buses or taxis to get around.

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August 23, 2011
Quirks & curiosities: Castle-sized room key in Naxos

Our biggest hotel room key — ever — had to be the one that opened our studio at the Naxos Beach II hotel on a hillside in the Stelida district of Naxos.

The key was’t just big, but it was heavy, too. It nearly poked a hole in my shorts pocket, so we turned it in to reception every time we left the hotel.

Here I am wielding the big key after opening our studio’s split door

August 19, 2011
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.

August 2, 2011
Chill out! Truly cool Greek Island pools

The gorgeous swimming pool at the Honeymoon Petra Villas in Imerovigli is positioned on the Santorini caldera cliffside hundreds of feet above the Aegean Sea …

… with spectacular views of Nea Kameni, the volcano island

Deep freeze: There are two great ways to beat the extreme summer heat in the Greek Islands: go for a swim in the sea, or take a plunge in a really cool hotel pool. But depending on the time of season you travel, there’s a good chance the pool could be cooler, if not downright frigid. There’s also a chance the water in both the sea and the pools could be too cold for swimming altogether. At least, that’s been our experience.

We typically travel to Greece in May, and have always encountered hot weather — including brief but brutal heat waves on Naxos and Santorini that sent afternoon temperatures soaring to nearly 40 Celsius. But regardless of how hot the air temperature got, the Aegean Sea has always been too cold for us to swim. In fact, there have been times I couldn’t even wade in the water during visits to Mykonos, Naxos, Paros and Santorini because it felt like my feet started to freeze only seconds after stepping in. Even just dipping my toes in the water at Super Paradise beach on Mykonos one May was too painful because the water was so bitterly cold.

Surprisingly, our hotel swimming pools haven’t been much warmer. And sometimes they’ve actually been colder! I could count on one hand the number of times we were able to spend more than five minutes in a pool, and on just one finger the number where we lasted longer than 10 minutes.

Even when we travelled to the islands during the second half of September one year, we got to swim only twice — once in the sea (which was blissfully warm) and once in a pool (which was shockingly cold) — even though Greece had experienced blistering heat waves throughout the summer.

Are we disappointed that we haven’t been able to do more swimming in Greece? Maybe just a bit. We’ve had good times at plenty of island beaches, and we’ve enjoyed spectacular views from most of our hotel swimming pool terraces. Cooling off with an ice cold bottle of Mythos instead of a swim hasn’t been so bad!

I’ll tell you more about our pool and sea swimming experiences in upcoming “Chill Out!” posts. For today, however, here are pics of some of the cool swimming pools we’ve seen during our visits to Santorini.

The cliffside swimming pool and whirlpool at Dana Villas in Firostefani

Another view of the Dana Villas swimming pool and terrace

The cliffside swimming pool at Pegasus Suites hotel in Imerovigli …

… has a terrace that juts over the island’s rugged volcanic cliffs

Swimmers can watch ferry and cruise ships come and go from this sea view swimming pool atop the caldera in Firostefani

Another clifftop hotel swimming pool in Firostefani

Yet another Firostefani pool terrace with views of cruise ships

A closer look at the Firostefani pool pictured above

A small caldera-view swimming pool on the cliffside in Fira

An air mattress floats in a cliffside swimming pool in Imerovigli …

… while lounge chairs on the adjacent terrace overlook Skaros Rock

The caldera-view swimming pool at the Kafieris Apartments in Firostefani

Another view of the pool at the Kafieris Apartments

The Kafieris Apartments swimming pool at night

I’ve always loved the look of this pool and terrace at what appears to be a private villa on the cliffside in Firostefani …

… from above, the pool’s shape reminds me of an apple …

… there’s comfy cushions for lounging in the sun beside the pool …

… as well as lounge chairs and a shady nook nearby

The big palm tree next to the pool draws some attention away from the villa’s unique Cycladic architecture

Here’s another view of the palm tree and the pool …

… which has an infinity edge offering great views of the sea far below

The uniquely shaped and situated pool at the Honeymoon Petra Villas in Imerovigli offers some of the most stunning views in all of Santorini

The swimming pool and terrace offer incredible views in several directions

The pool is built into the cliffside hundreds of feet above the sea …

… and has a shallow wading pool on the hotel level below

A side view of the Honeymoon Petra Villas pool …

… and some of the apartments built of volcanic rock from the island

One final view of the Honeymoon Petra Villas swimming pool, this time from the clifftop footpath that leads to Oia in one direction, and to Fira in the other

July 28, 2011