Day 51: First Day in Stalis

Monday 8th August 2022

A Very (un)Hectic Schedule Ahead

I don’t have much planned for my time here in Stalis, given that I chose it as a way of escaping the expensive Cyclades in peak season. As a result, I’ll probably combine the next few days into a single post, but, as it’s my first full day here, let’s see how it went.

Breakfast of Champions

The day started in spectacular fashion: I woke up quite early after a fantastic night’s sleep in the luxuriously comfortable bed at Minois Boutique Hotel. After a lovely soak under the vast showerhead, I was ready for breakfast. Ready, but not prepared, as it turned out.

I arrived downstairs to the breakfast area just as it opened at 8:15, so I had the pick of tables and first helpings from the buffet – and what a selection it was:

The options and quality were amazing: fresh coffee, fruit smoothies, hot and cold pastries, fruit, bread, jams and a host of other sweet and savoury items. I managed two full plates, two cups of coffee and a smoothie plus some orange juice before I was close to bursting and had to stop! Breakfast was definitely going to be a favourite part of my day at this hotel.

Work, Then Play

As it was a weekday, I had to spend a couple of hours in my room catching up on work duties. There wasn’t too much to do though, so by mid-morning, I was stepping into my swim shorts and heading down to the pool to catch some sun. The pool isn’t huge and there are only a dozen sunloungers, but it wasn’t busy so I had no trouble finding a quiet corner spot. I spent a couple of hours sunbathing – it was pretty warm and the pool area was sheltered from the wind so regular dips in the pool to cool off were essential.

Lunch Dilemma

I had planned to walk into Stalis to find somewhere for lunch and get out of the hotel for a bit, but when I saw some other guests receiving food from the hotel bar, it looked really good (not surprising given the quality of breakfast) so I chose to stick around and ordered a club sandwich and Coke Zero. The food was really good and improved my already very positive opinion of the hotel.

In Search of a Gym

The afternoon followed a pretty similar pattern to the morning: a bit of work back in my hotel room then an hour or so down by the pool. I wanted to keep up with my gym routine, having been pretty consistent during my week on Ios but hadn’t been able to confirm the nearest place to my hotel. Someone online had suggested checking out Cactus Royal hotel as it has its own fitness centre, so I got my gear on and walked down to see if it was open to the public, but after a sweaty 20-minute journey I was told that it was for hotel guests only and had to come straight back again.

Back at the hotel, I looked online and found a gym in nearby Hersonissos but as it would involve a bus trip I decided to leave it until tomorrow.

Dinner in Stalis

I showered and rested for a bit before heading out to dinner. Prior to arriving in Stalis, I’d done some research online into good restaurants and shortlisted a few. One of them was Jasmine House Chinese restaurant, so I made my way there down the hill from the hotel and along the main beach road in Stalis – it was busy with tourists and had a pretty nice atmosphere, though the road is quite narrow in places and there was a decent amount of traffic to contend with.

The restaurant was quite busy when I arrived, but I managed to get a table despite having no reservation. I ordered some vegetable spring rolls, followed by sweet and sour chicken and egg fried rice with 0.5 ltr of house white wine. The food was good but quite salty – a fact I only truly appreciated when I got back to my hotel and was incredibly thirsty for the rest of the evening!