Cali Mykonos

My journey to Cali Mykonos was via another part of the Aegean. Last year, my sister went full Mamma Mia! and decided to swap Bermondsey for a Greek island, moving with her husband and young son to Paros in the Cyclades. Yes, she had also been a fan of the ITV series The Durrells. Her family — which includes a disabled Greek cat, Svetlana (‘Svetty’), found on a dusty street corner in 2020, having been abandoned at just a few weeks old — has now expanded to Cleopatra, the donkey in the field next door, and a growing troupe of stray cats. My sister has yet to switch to dungarees as her default choice of clothing, but it’s only a matter of time. 

As a remote-worker, naturally I sail in whenever I can, ideally for several weeks at a time. After they eventually kicked me out this last visit, I got the boat to Mykonos, taking my sister — desperate to escape her wonderful but tyrannical toddler for two nights — with me. After a 35-minute crossing, we were whisked into an SUV and taken away from the mêlée to a different side of the island, and to Cali Mykonos. 

The Greek-American owners were onto something when they discovered this location, next to Kalafati Beach in the south-east. Too much of the crush is centred around Mykonos Town, but here you’re a world away — with a shuttle going back and forth, and taking little more than half an hour, for when you want to enter the fray. 

I first stayed at Cali the summer it opened, when half the cast of Made in Chelsea decamped here and were flooding social media with images of that pool. When I was there that season, I was aghast to see a fellow guest walk in to breakfast, brief the waiter, walk back out and re-enter, this time being filmed as the waiter pulled out his chair for him and bid him ‘Kalimera’. Nothing could condone that sort of behaviour, but Cali really is that photogenic and even those of us with a shred of modesty left will struggle not to come over all influencer.

Our room was at the top of the estate, with a breath-stopping view of the Aegean, and Paros and various other Cyclades slumbering away in the haze (my sister waved at her menagerie across the water). The rooms — many of which are self-contained, multi-floor villas — are all neutral-toned visions with cool cream walls, ambient lighting and windows that frame the sea as if it’s a painting. Ours had a deck with a pool seemingly above the sea and a shaded area for siestas. Somehow, we managed to drag ourselves away from this private paradise. 

The hotel is set into the cliff edge, with rooms arranged off a precipitous oregano-lined path (it’s wise to hold on to the golf buggies carefully). We walked down for a lengthy swim in the famously long (130-metre), cliff-hugging pool and then descended to the little cove for a swim in the sea, stopping to share a delicious burger that could’ve come out of any American-influenced London burger bar during the patty craze of 2011–13. 

Come sundown, we set off for Ano Mera, one of the last remaining traditional parts of Mykonos, for a stroll around the hilltop village. There are lots of wholesome-looking tavernas here, but we had dinner booked at Cali, so returned to catch the last streaks of sunset behind the mountain over cocktails at the Apollo Bar, new to the hotel this season. At Avlí, we had a perfect Greek and Mediterranean dinner of ceviche and shrimp saganaki, lobster spaghetti and beef shortrib, orange cake and loukoumades with honey.

The next morning we do a yoga class in the already-blazing sun at Cali’s shiny new outdoor gym, which has a row of Pilates reformer machines we’d be back to use later if it wasn’t so hot. The setting is absurdly pretty — livestock is grazing in the neighbouring field and Helios’s chariot is directly above us in the sky, ready to receive our salutations. I’m given a peek at the soon-to-be-unveiled spa, which alas isn’t quite ready during our visit, but no matter — a therapist arrives at our spacious villa for an in-room facial using Ariadne Athens products.

On our final night, we head in to Mykonos Town and the Cali shuttle drops us at the edge of the old port (cruise-ship and general demand meant that much bigger docks had to be built around the turn of the century) for a scenic stroll along the curving promenade into the centre. We wander around the narrow, crazy-paved streets, popping into well-styled boutiques, before locating Noema for dinner. This scene-y restaurant is pure Mykonos — the female staff dressed as Grecian goddesses, the men in trendy monastic robes and sandals. Even the foliage is stylish. A DJ spins tracks as we feast (and I mean that literally) on red-snapper carpaccio, charred beetroot with Greek yoghurt and walnut pesto, grilled sea-bream with fennel tops and vine leaves, and baked baby potatoes with lemon oil, samphire and oregano, before rolling to the pick-up point to meet the Cali shuttle. 

We leave Cali the next morning, my sister to go and be mauled by her three-year-old in Paros, me home to London. But I’ll be back in the Cyclades for another Mamma Mia! reunion before the summer’s out, ideally with Colin Firth and Pierce Brosnan dancing up a hill behind us.