Fancy a week on Symi over Easter?
Easter is nearly upon us. The bangs have started – the firecrackers that are thrown to ward off evil spirits. The church bells have been ringing, the devout have been following the fast, and the plants have shot up after recent rains to welcome Great Week, Holy Week, which starts on Monday.
It’s not too late to be here. I had a quick look around for cheap holiday deals to Symi currently being advertised. It used to be a case of going to a travel agent and looking through a brochure, waiting for calls to be made and then having to decide on where to stay based on a few images and a write-up. Now, of course, you are inundated with websites advertising ‘cheap Symi holidays’, and it’s a case of not knowing where to start. I did a quick Google search and found the usual suspects, Booking.com, Expedia, Monarch and Olympic (and a post from Adriana’s blog coming up fifth in a global search, well done!). Thea Apartments came in seventh and a post from me came it at number eight – this was while searching for ‘Symi Easter holiday deals’, I must have once written something of note about the subject. I just had a look and it was a post from last April, talking about Easter and a visit to To Spitiko (which opens for the summer this Saturday, by the way).
Anyway, I ran two searches, one through Monarch and one through Olympic Holidays. Both were looking at London to Symi next Wednesday for seven nights. Monarch bummed out with no results found – a case of a business grabbing search engines rather than actually offering what they’ve advertised, perhaps. But Olympic came up with nine options, many at around the same price and all great for a place to stay.
Irini Studios – Yialos, €381 pp
Taxiarchis – Horio, €384 pp
Sevasti – Horio, €386 pp
Anastasoula – Yialos, €386 pp
Anastasia – Horio, €388 pp
Pedi Beach Hotel – Pedi, €491 pp
Opera House – Yialos, €497 pp
Nireus Hotel – Yialos, €508 pp
Iapetos Village – Yialos, €608 pp
These were package holidays with transfers included. These can cost you quite a bit if coming on your own – bus or taxi to boat, boat tickets, taxi up to Horio etc.
That was only one quick look around the package holidays on offer, and I did look at other sites that, like Monarch, offered a promising search engine result but no actual holiday – so they wasted my time. There are others, and it’s perfectly easy to arrange things yourself or get advice from the likes of The Symi Visitor or Kalodoukas Holidays (just search for them online and you’ll get straight there).
Well, that passed a couple of minutes, and I thought it was worth sharing. It’s the weekend and not too late to book a quick trip across to Symi. The boats are running, there’s a 15:00 Blue Star from Rhodes on Wednesdays now so if you can get a flight to land you on Rhodes no later than 13.30, you should be able to make that with no hassle. Go for it. I dare you.
