The Costa Meno: Greek Islands
The Dodecanese, Cyclades, Ionians and loads in between—we found the old family mansions, charming guest houses and tasteful modern renos that won’t feel like you’ve been (golden) fleeced
As soon as we finished last year’s Costa Meno Italy, I wanted to jump into the Greek version. Costa Meno is a term we coined to mean “costs less”—far more romantic than using the ABC words (affordable, budget, cheap). Of course we all want a deal, places we can afford that are pure and authentic, but we know that typing those ABC words into a search engine will, because of the nature of algorithms, tend to pull up crappy hotels you’d never want to leave home for. And so when thinking of approaching Greece with its more than 200 islands, we needed to take a beat to figure out how best to approach it.
For as long as I’ve been traveling there—starting in ‘86 when I rented a cute apartment in Mykonos with my best friend after high-school graduation, then spent a college interim semester on Kalymnos—Greece has always been the land of small, family-owned and reasonably priced guest houses and small hotels. In putting this list together, I kept thinking about how Greece has so few old-world grand hotels, which really traces back to the Grand Tour of the 19th-century aristos, who typically only reached Naples and Taormina (only the archaeologists made it as far as Greece!). Those fancy people on their gap year of sorts resulted in the emergence of fancy places to stay along the way. It’s a much more recent phenomenon that luxury hotels and their accompanying inflated prices have started dotting this country’s 8,500 miles of coastline. While I love many of these places with their modern architecture, minimalist chic, and insane views, my heart belongs to the rustic and authentic—which, for me, feels truly Greek. You can get that modernist luxury anywhere!
Like last year, we emailed Greek friends who know these islands, pored through our Greece Travel Planner, our Dodecanese and Cyclades Lists, and researched way past the first couple of Google pages. Our methodology was to price out double rooms during the peak weeks of July 15 and 21 (looking at weekdays, as prices can hike dramatically on weekends), and focused on places that are under 300 euros a night (though we did include a handful that inch above that, because they looked amazing). Most of our picks are small hotels, but we also included rentals when we came across them—we know there is a much larger universe of rentals that become increasingly affordable the more people you add to split the cost, but you don’t need us to find those. We wound up focusing on the islands, as there are so many of them, but at some point we promise we’ll come back around and add the mainland coast and Peloponnese.
When we dug into this project, our friend Nausika Georgiadou, who owns one of our favorite properties, Skinopi Lodge in Milos (not a Costa Meno!), confirmed our hunch about where to search—the islands where Greeks actually still vacation: “The popular islands will be hard, but the lesser-known ones have a lot!” she said. “I was in Skyros last week, in a beautiful little hotel for 150 euros. These are the places the Greeks go to now, and they have the feeling of Greece as it used to be. Personally, I cannot have a holiday in the popular places anymore, with all the black transfer cars, the massive fast ferries, etc…I prefer those beautiful ‘left behind’ places that are not so Instagrammable.”
Since some of those islands may be less familiar to many (a few were to us!), and because they all attract a different kind of person/interest, we added a little description of each. At the same time, we did manage to dig up a few Costa Meno options on the beaten path—Santorini, Hydra, Patmos—if you still want to go, despite the crowds. But you may need to forget the air conditioner and embrace Greece’s famous summer winds, the meltemi—and anyway, the true luxury is in connecting with real people who own these places and want to share their islands with you, not in ridiculous pillow selections, fluffy bedside foot mats and sushi. With that, here’s our Costa Meno Greece list. —Y.E.