Karidis Hotel

Location: Consistently praised for being within 2–5 minutes’ walk to Kamari’s beach, restaurants, shops, and bars.

We booked the Karidis because of being labelled as a small and friendly hotel – and it certainly lives up to its name. Firstly, the hotel only has 21 rooms, so it feels very personable, and never crowded.  The swimming pool is quite a nice size for the hotel and there are plenty of sunbeds always available.  There is a sunny part of the pool, and a shaded part with umbrellas and trees.  As a lot of people tend to go to the beach, travel to Fira, Oia or Akrotiri during the day (as Santorini is dripping in beautiful sights and experiences), the pool tends to be quiet for a swim at any time of the day. We had a triple room, which was described as being in a basement room.  Don’t be fooled, these rooms are large, have been modernised and have a courtyard (with a drying area, table and a lot of space) and have an incredible amount of light both inside and out.   They are accessed via an external staircase and sit at the front of the hotel, but are double glazed (so we did not hear traffic noise).  They have a kettle, fridge, safe and air conditioning.  When we arrived, the incredibly friendly staff greeted us, and showed us to our room.   In the room, as we had been delayed, the hotel had left us a large bottle of water in the fridge. There were some coffee sachets, tea bags, milk, sugar, a welcome gift of Turkish delight and a small decanter of Ouzo.  It was a lovely treat! Breakfast is simple, but sufficient.  I am vegan, so I generally ate toast with tomatoes (or the Marmite I took with me). However, my family had croissants, eggs (scrambled or boiled), dependent on the day there was bacon or smoked sausages, cheese, ham, yogurt, honey, fruit, cereals or other pastries.   There is a toasted sandwich maker, so my family had cheese toasties a few times through the day.   There is a laundrette just across the road, and just below there is quite a good supermarket.  There is also an excellent smoothie bar (Juice Me) next door to the supermarket, and they will tailor fresh smoothies and juices for you, and have snacks took.  There is an excellent bakery at close to the sea front which does a range of salads, sandwiches, desserts and drinks if you don’t want to eat out. There are a range of tavernas leading down the road. The only issue is that there is quite a lot of ‘pester power’ trying to get you to go into the taverna.  We felt quite pestered by the people standing outside of the tavernas (quite often the owners).  In particular, we felt pestered by the owner of Meli and Thymari restaurant – and we did try the restaurant, but it wasn’t as good as the Olive Oil restaurant across the road (which is beautiful food). The walk to the beach is around 4 minutes, and there are a lot of tavernas which will give you free sunloungers and umbrellas if you buy drinks or food from them.    Just above the Karidis, there is a tour company.  It has tours which are cheaper than the package holiday companies, and they are so helpful with local information there

We stayed at the end of June into July. Fast check in. The room was all we needed. A DOUBLE BED! First time on any holiday,fridge, tv, free safe and aircon. It’s a small hotel on the edge of town but there’s tavernas all the way on the walk to the beach. Small pool with a few sunbeds, never crowded.The breakfast was all you needed to start the day. Cereal, fruit, pastries, yoghurt etc…. Anyone wanting a late drink must use the onsite fridge. Glass of wine €2 and a mythos €1.80 sit on the terrace and people watch. We often did this and were brought bowls of crisps whip was very kind. The tax was around €20 for the week. Great little hotel in a great spot. Would stay again no problem.