If you haven’t entered any dates, the rate shown is provided directly by the hotel and represents the cheapest double room (including tax) available in the next 60 days.
Prices have been converted from the hotel’s local currency (EUR279.91), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.
You’d think staking a claim on the only sandy beach on bohemian Greek isle Hydra would give you fame enough, but not for Mandraki Beach Resort. No – in the 19th century it was a naval base and shipyard for Admiral Miaoulis, who played a key role in the Greek War of Independence. Now, like the countercultural figures drawn over here throughout the halcyon hippie days until now, the hideaway’s mind is turned to peaceful pursuits – your own sunlounger for the whole stay, spritzes and sushi, sunbathing on the floating dock and idly grazing like the island’s famous mules. Yes, its military honours are as gleaming as the Aegean waters, but at Mandraki you’re utterly at ease.
Smith Extra
Get this when you book through us:
A bottle of sparkling wine for guests in the Cabin, Seaside and Anchor Suites; or a bottle of champagne for guests in the Side Beachfront, Beachfront, Interconnecting and VIP Tower Suites
11am, but flexible, subject to availability. Earliest check-in, 3pm.
Prices
Double rooms from £272.07 (€318), including tax at 13.5 per cent. Please note the hotel charges an additional government tax of €10.00 per room per night on check-out.
More details
Rates include the à la carte Mediterranean breakfast (with options for all diets), plus sparkling wine and doughnuts.
Also
Hydra’s hilly landscape and the resort’s remote location make this unsuitable for guests with mobility issues.
Hotel closed
The property opens for the summer season from April to October.
At the hotel
Beach with free-to-use sunloungers and parasols, private jetty and dock, concierge, charged laundry and ironing service, free WiFi. In rooms: TV with Netflix, minibar (with one free round during your stay), coffee- and tea-making kit, hypoallergenic pillows on request, bathrobes and slippers, Diptyque bath products, and air-conditioning.
Our favourite rooms
When you’re staying by the only sandy beach in Hydra, you want to be in on the action, and the Beachfront Suites position you staps from the sand; and, if you want to get your strokes in in private, there’s a sunken pool modestly tucked away behind a fence on the terrace too. For wistful sea-gazing, the Tower Suite, with its 19th-century stone walls, has expansive views from the windows and an alfresco sundowner spot.
Poolside
There’s no pool but those sparkly blue waters lapping at the beach are swimmable.
Spa
There’s no spa, but a massage therapist can be called on if you’re in need of kneading.
Packing tips
Bring a bundle of beach reads – much ink has been spilled about Hydra and her famous adoptee Leonard Cohen. Get stuck into Leonard, Marianne, and Me: Magical Summers on Hydra by Judy Scott, or Tamar Hodes’ The Water and the Wine: the story of Leonard Cohen and Marianne Ihlen on Hydra. And Polly Samson’s A Theatre for Dreamers is an evocative love letter in novel form.
Also
The hotel’s a part of Grecian history too, with a small 18th-century Orthodox church and remnants of its time as a military base for important 19th-century naval officer Admiral Miaoulis.
Children
This is more of a kick-back without the kids kinda place for over-18s only.
Sustainability efforts
The hotel staff look after this historically significant building, following the strict codes of care (right down to decor notes) laid down by the municipality of Hydra. Otherwise, they have LED lights, motion detectors and sensors for open windows, recycle, use natural materials in decor and facilities, and use local produce in the kitchen.
Swim your drinks over to the floating dock off the beach for sundowners, chase an Instagrammable moment on the sign with a rope swing, and watch time tick slowly by from your own loungers.
Dress Code
Powerfully flower-y in a nod to the island’s hippie nature.
Hotel restaurant
Say ‘aye, aye’ to Captain M, the hotel’s restaurant, named in tribute to military leader Miaoulis. Rations are anything but meagre here and there’s a steady stream of fresh catches used in dishes such as citrus-y grilled shrimp with a truffle-balsamic crumble; sous-vide octopus with squid-ink mayo and confit lemon; and lobster salad with salty Arseniko cheese crumbled over; or starring in the siren song of a sushi menu. The cauliflower salad is also a signature with caramelised almonds and honey vinaigrette, and the likes of crab brioche with avocado cream and cinnamon-y baklawa with marzipan ice-cream make lunching a decadent affair too. Breakfasts on the Greek islands are always an event, and there’s no exception here, with moreish feta-laden tomatoey strapatsada, olive-pocked omelettes, French-toast-style tsoureki, thick yoghurt drizzled in local honey,and a Grecian pie of the day.
Hotel bar
Drinks can be taken on the terrace, or guests can sip and sunbathe. Signature cocktails keep things fruity and refreshing even as temperatures climb – take the Mandraki Spritz with gin, yuzu, lime mint and grapefruit soda; or the Captain M with rum, mango, coconut, guava, and citrus. But frosty glasses of sparkling Greek wine, and champagne mixers are welcome quenchers too. And, if you get peckish, there’s a beach menu of bao buns, sushi rolls, fresh sashimi and lobster burgers.
Last orders
Breakfast is from 8am to a leisurely 11.30am. Lunch is from noon to 6pm, and dinner is 6.30pm to 11pm. Last drinks are poured at 11.30pm.
Room service
No need to curb your cravings here – room service is available round-the-clock.
Mandraki Beach Resort is set by a sheltered sandy bay east of Saronic Island, Hydra’s main harbour on the north coast.
Planes
For those not resident in Greece, it’s easiest to touch down at Athens’ Eleftherios Venizelos Airport and then reach the hotel via Piraeus. Or you could charter a private jet to land at Sparti Air Base in the Peloponnese.
Automobiles
Cars are banned on Hydra, and this is why four legs are good here: traditional methods of transportation (horse, donkey, mule) are still in use.
Other
You can catch a Flying Dolphin or Catamaran service from Piraeus straight to Hydra (a journey that takes just over an hour). Services also set sail from Erioni or Metochi too (for a quicker half-hour crossing on a passenger ferry). Once you arrive, the hotel’s boat shuttle service is free for guests and runs around every half hour from the clock tower at Hydra Port to the resort and back, from early in the morning till the restaurant closes at 11pm.
Worth getting out of bed for
The hotel isn’t just by the beach, it’s by the only sandy beach in the whole of Hydra. So, Mandraki Resort has made the most of its fortuitous position, spacing out sunloungers and parasols that are free for guests to use. The bay is sheltered and safe for swimming, and there are moorings for yachts, too, if you fancy a luxurious jaunt along the coastline – the hotel can help to arrange hire of various vessels if you didn’t glide in on your own. There are two resident yogis who hold private sessions on request (for a charge), and a therapist can be called on for massages. Hydra Port is just a three-minute free shuttle ride away, and the stately naval mansions of the 18th and 19th centuries, winding cobbled streets, and a kibosh on modern architecture make Hydra’s main town a picturesque one indeed. Watch fishermen haul in their catches, spy drowsy cats, and stop into the History Museum and the Lazaros Kountouriotis Mansion to learn about the island’s past. Or pull on the island’s countercultural roots; Cubist artist Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghika set up an artistic community here in the 1930s, and by the 1960s the likes of Henry Miller and more famously Leonard Cohen (who wrote Bird on a Wire and So Long, Marianne here), had bought properties. The songwriter’s pad is tucked away on a hillside close to the Four Corners grocers, if you want to pay your respects. While wandering, try to hunt down a small door marked ‘poems’, behind which is a book of verse contributed to by residents, and the beautiful 19th-century Rafalias Pharmacy. And, each summer, Slaughterhouse, a Deste Foundation project space, hosts pop-up shows by well-known artists. In the wilds, you can ride or swim with horses, or hike out to Kamini, where there’s an upmarket yacht club (ask for ‘KYC’).
Local restaurants
Sail over the bay to Hydra’s main port for typically gregarious Greek meals and menus that wash in with the waves. Under the romantic wisteria canopy of Kseri Elia Douskos’s terrace, you can enjoy lemon-y beef stew, soutzoukakia (cumin-spiced meatballs in tomato sauce), and whatever’s in the net that day (the scorpionfish is especially tasty) – finishing up with a traditional orange pie. Bratsera Hotel was once a sponge factory, but is now a touch more glamorous, with a strong reputation for delicious takes on the sea’s other treasures (smoked octopus with red pepper, sardines wrapped in vine leaves), plus decadent bougatsa (custard pies). And, for deviations on the omnipresent Greek salad, Manna has ones tossed with strawberry, watermelon, Santorini tomatoes and goat’s cheese; or mango-glazed shrimp and Thai chilli sauce.
Local cafés
The Cool Mule is an ice-cream kiosk serving gelato and sorbet scoops made with very fresh ingredients – try locally inspired flavours such as baklawa, Easter cake and melomakarona (after the Christmas biscuits).
Local bars
Hydra’s not a party-hard Greek isle, but it doesn’t head off to bed early either. The Pirate Bar has been the setting for cocktail-fuelled shenanigans since 1976. Its interior is flagstone-floored with frescoed wood and ceiling beams, and gets very lively when the DJ sets start; the outdoors is a little quieter for more genteel eves. And, overlooking the sparkling waters (you can dive right in from the surrounding rocks) is Spilia Beach Club, a super-chill spot which gets very lively after sundown.
Do you know what the fastest-moving creature on Earth is? Forget peregrine falcons, cheetahs, and Usain Bolt, it’s two British people, deprived of heat all summer, arriving by boat into a secluded, sun-dappled Greek cove, and changing into their swimsuits. 0–100mph in 0.2 seconds flat, Mrs Smith is almost naked, champagne in hand, and I’m not far behind her. I’ve never seen anything like it, and neither has the porter helping us with our bags. But let me rewind a little…
Firstly, welcome to Hydra, the lithe island which lies like a long dash under the Eastern Peloponnese and makes an evangelist of all visitors who pass by. It’s easy to see why: there’s its famous carless-ness (donkeys and mules step in to haul luggage up sharp inclines) and the fact Leonard Cohen made a home here. There’s its pine-scented swimming spots, its Jeff Koons curlicuing gold sun perched on a cliff edge, and its slender cats which migrate like magnets into laps. Then there’s also the fact that it’s eye-wateringly well-preserved. As our ferry swerves into the harbour, and next-door island Poros rises out of the sea like a whaleback, Hydra port seems calibrated for beauty. Houses step up in perfect strides into the hills – all Venetian balconies and Mediterranean terracotta.
Beyond the hustle and bustle of spritz bars along the main gangway, a curving, pedestrian path runs each way out of the port before abandoning the coast and heading inland. Were you to walk to Mandraki Beach Resort, it would take you and your donkey about 30 minutes – but for hotel guests, a private boat meets you in a very Casablanca-ish way at the clocktower. Navy blue gloss, with a gleaming lacquered-wood interior, it shines as it skirts us over the waves.
Hydra by name, hydra by nature: I should say that we arrived to the island in the midst of apocalyptic storms (a story for another time, though I will say, if your partner’s hair ever stands directly on end root to tip, it’s not unlikely imminent lightning is aiming at their head, and I do not recommend being where we were at the time: on a boat).
If this were in a film, it might be a touch heavy-handed, but it’s totally true: as Mandraki comes into view, the clouds finally disband into shining blue, and the sea glitters in that way beloved by perfume adverts: a riot of firefly flashes. Three members of the team step out to greet us on the stone dock, and it all feels wonderfully White Lotus, with all the decadence and none of the murder.
Perfectly to the scale of the island, Mandraki Beach Resort slips like a little beam into the bay, its terracotta roof the same colour as the winding road up the mountain behind it. Its totally transformed buildings take up the footprint – and use some of the original stone – of the 18th-century hideout of Greek revolutionary Captain Miaoulis, a storied sea captain whose forces sheltered in the cove.
But enough about the history, and more about the private pool. We’re escorted to our room through a slick bamboo gate that takes us into our own walled garden, an outdoor living room – with seating big enough to host, and a duet of deckchairs – footnoted by an emerald-cut pool, with views of the sparkling bay beyond it.
Our room is as cool and crisp and welcome as the bottle of Veuve Clicquot on ice that waits for us. Its stone walls rise sky-high into the eaves, and, made of marble, linen, pale wood and pure space, it feels like the platonic ideal of shade, the type that in any other place on Earth you’d spend hours searching for but never quite find.
And that’s when it happens, our record-speed strip for sun. I park on a lounger, and Mrs Smith, decked in red, takes the pool edge, topped with a textured marble that retains its cool even in afternoon heat. The David Hockney lines of light dancing in the water next to her make me think of kids playing jump rope, and my eyes make the same ribbons when I shut them in the sun.
It feels obscene to shut them though. How dare I? Each time I open them I have to chew an embarrassing smile out of my mouth. It’s the one-two punch of pool then bay behind it. It’s the lulling boat masts, the lapping sea; the cove’s edges that slope into the water, the bright distraction of butterflies. I top up Mrs Smith’s glass, then take another sip: all together, it’s so pure an expression of ‘holiday’ I feel almost embarrassed.
There are things to do – a little saunter into ‘town’ perhaps, past the balm and camouflage of eucalyptus trees, and walls with white tops that draw clean, beautiful lines on the island’s steep edges. But the truth is, at Mandraki, the point as we personally chose to interpret it, was to do precisely nothing.
We glide between our pool and – 18 steps away at most – the straw parasols that dress Hydra’s only sandy beach, studded with jade-green stones. We carry our books poolside, beachside, poolside, beachside, until they’ve been splashed then sundried so many times the pages look crimped. And, of course, we eat.
The on-site restaurant seems to extend directly into the sea: seen from a distance (a distance we like to keep minimal), the softly lit tables appear to float on water. We maraud around the menu – from a pitch-perfect cauliflower, toasted almond and lemon zest salad (a riff on a Gordon Ramsay recipe he’d always loved, the owner tells us), to scallop and shrimp orzo, which is so good I promise Mrs Smith the world if she’ll share it with me. (‘I thought you’d already promised me that,’ she replies suspiciously.)
In the toast of the afternoon, something about backlit clouds in Greece can’t help but make you think of the gods, and as the sun sets, the water in front of us and the heather-pink hills behind the hotel turn to gold. Distant hills transform into dusty silhouettes then disappear. Feeling like gods ourselves watching over all of this, we drink dessert wine in tiny glasses. Back in our room, continuing the theme, a celestial final flourish: a turn-down service has tucked our windows in for the night, and left iced water and midnight-snack-sized brownies on our bedside tables.
Getaways with Mrs Smith always feature an animal finale. On our last day, as soon as she shouts back to the beach, ‘Rosa! An octopus!’, I know she’s a goner. For the last hours of our final afternoon, Mrs Smith stays out in the cove – floating on her front, shoulders burning – so she can hover above her new friend, watching its curling limbs, its occasional spats with fish, well and truly infatuated. Since she is a proper person with a proper job, I shouldn’t say that at one point she attempted to ‘fashion a snorkel’ from a biodegradable drinking straw so she could watch it without taking breaks for breath. But that’s love, and for the saner among you, I would encourage you to bring more conventional equipment.
It’s love too – love tipping into heartbreak – when finally, the time comes for the boat to take us away again. I’ve mentioned previously that Mrs Smith and I play endless rounds of rhetorical questions. Mostly they feature methods for escaping apocalypses, but every now and then, we allow ourselves a slightly more romantic scenario. ‘If you could live in any hotel we’ve ever stayed at, which would it be?’ she asks me. As fast as our changing into swimsuits: Mandraki, we agree. Mrs Smith just hopes her octopus pal will still be there on our return.
