After my Santorini and Naxos trip, I wanted to do a quick review of Hotel Palladion and Vakhos Apartments – two affordable hotels we stayed at on the islands.
Hotel Palladion and Vakhos Apartments Review
At a low price of around $15-30 per night, you can’t expect anything amazing. But considering the fact that I was living in a place with no air conditioning back in Athens, I was eternally grateful for my hotel rooms on the Greek islands. They were comfortable and clean, so I had no problem enjoying my accommodations.
What made the experience especially pleasant was the hospitality. Both hotels were family owned and the owners were sweet, which made the experience even better than I had expected.
Hotel Palladion Karterados – Santorini
This is what Hotel Palladion looked like from the outside. To get to Hotel Palladion after getting off your ferry, take the bus from the Athinios Port to Fira, and tell the bus driver your hotel is in Karterados. The bus driver will most likely drop you off at a bus stop about 7 minutes walking distance from Hotel Palladion.
I would say the hotel is around 12-15 minutes walking distance from Fira. It’s not smack dab in the city center, but for the price, I had 0 complaints.
This is what we learned about Santorini – you want to stay close to Oia or Fira (and NOT Perissa). If you want to experience Santorini nightlife, it would be better to stay closer to Fira and visit Oia just for a day for the views. Hotel Palladion isn’t that far from Fira – we had no trouble hitting up the nightlife on our second night and getting our drunk selves back home. 😛
The view outside of the hotel
This is what the “hotel lobby” looked like. It basically looks like a regular home:
The owners were nice enough to let us rest on their couches at times, and they even let us check in early at 10 AM because we had arrived in Santorini way too early.
So we got the keys to our room. I was with two other flatmates so we ended up getting a triple room. It cost around $110 for 3 people, for 2 nights. This ended up being around $37 per person for the 2 nights. Pretty good price considering it was Santorini in the summer!
My Room:
I didn’t end up getting pictures of the triple. But after my shitty, unforeseen circumstances, I had to book my own room for a 3rd night and I snapped some photos of this room.
I booked this room with two twin beds for 30 Euros.
The light in the bathroom stopped working for a bit so one of their maintenance guys came by to fix it. No problems with that.
In the triple room, the bathroom felt a bit small for all 3 of us, and at one point I found a beetle on the bathroom floor! I went in the bathroom, felt a pinching feeling on my toe, looked down, and there it was holding onto my foot for dear life. It was pretty scary, LOL. But I can’t blame the hotel owners because we left the bathroom window open which let all types of bugs come inside.
At the end of my stay, the hotel owners gave us little souvenirs. It was quite nice :).
Vakhos Apartments – Naxos
Finding the Hotel:
When I arrived to Naxos – I had SO MANY PROBLEMS getting to my hotel. I had no sense of direction and relied on Google Maps to get me to where I needed to be.
So at first, I looked up “Vakhos Hotel” on Google Maps – which ended up leading me to the wrong place. And I don’t even understand what the fuck route I went on because I literally would walk up a hill, then climb back down a flight of stairs, walk uphill again, then climb down stairs once again. So ridiculous. With a heavy backpack and suitcase in hand – I was about to pass out under the sweltering heat.
Then, I went on Expedia and found out I was in the wrong area. So I used the map on Expedia to route me back correctly. And once I was close, I looked around and still couldn’t find it. I had to make a call, and fortunately the hotel owner came outside to guide me to the right place. My phone was dying, mind you, so I was freaking out that I wouldn’t find my hotel.
Vakhos Apartments needs to have an easily visible sign at eye level for you to see, because it is so difficult to find!
Getting to my room:
The hotel owner was so nice to help me get to the location. The weird thing was he didn’t check me in at all, meaning he didn’t even ask for my ID or anything. Normally I would have thought that was extremely unsafe. But I think it was because we had spoken on the phone twice – once that day and another time the day prior because I had to change my reservation.
This is the front of Vakhos Hotel. I didn’t take many pictures because there wasn’t that much to see, honestly. The door in front is the little lobby (which looked like someone’s home, once again). And the stairs on the left took me straight to my room.
My room:
I didn’t take pictures of the room, so I’m going to steal these pictures from Google (don’t sue me). This is basically what it looked like:
Pretty chill. Very similar to the Hotel Palladion room. Both had air conditioning which is basically all I cared about, lol. I think this room had a balcony too. The room only cost me around $17-18 per night.
Breakfast:
They include a free breakfast until 10 AM! It only really consists of cereal, juice, and bread – but it was good enough for me.
Location:
This is the best part of the hotel. It is actually a mere 10 minutes walking from the ferry port (as long as you’re able to locate your hotel), and around 1-2 minutes walking to Agios Georgios beach.
The beach was so nice. I spent every there getting work done and lounging out. Naxos is quite affordable as well – eating a small tuna baguette beachside only cost around $2-3.
Conclusion
As a budget traveler, these accommodations were a great value with good location! And the homeowners were particularly warm and welcoming. Again, I really only cared about air conditioning so my standards were not very high, and the hotels exceeded expectations. I would recommend them if you’re looking for a cheap place to stay on the islands.
Hotel Palladion: Click here for prices
Vakhos Apartments: Click here for prices
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