San Antonio

We stayed at San Antonio for three nights during our honeymoon and loved it???such a magical place! Favorite aspects: - The morning views! You???ll open up your doors to the beautiful Aegean Sea, caldera and rock formations. It???s unreal. - The breakfast was top notch and I looked forward to it every morning. Fresh ingredients, variety and really flavorful. - Situated in a quiet area of the island, which is really nice considering how touristy and packed Santorini gets. Being further away from the goings-ons also means that you need to rely on the hotel???s transportation service to take you places. Allot for 20 minutes for a shared shuttle service to pick you up but try to set it up with the front desk in advance. - The infinity pool is exactly as it???s shown in photos. Not huge but all you need given the size of the hotel and the view is amazing. - The spa was a nice surprise and we went for a facial massage, which we really enjoyed. - Our room was in a cave carved into the cliff???so cool. Not ideal aspects: - The hot tub was more like a warm tub. It would not heat up and after the first attempt at staying in there, we gave up. - The mattress wasn???t very comfortable, however, it didn???t seem to affect our sleep. - Would have loved a fitness center or a recommendation of somewhere to go for a workout/yoga! We asked upon check-in if there is anywhere to practice yoga, and I don???t think there is (after exploring), but they never closed the loop with us about it. You can always go hit up the Cliff Walk, though, the path literally is on top of the hotel!

my strong recommendation is to avoid this hotel. pros: it is a very attractive property with a wonderful view. the staff is generally very friendly and helpful. I liked many, many of the people I interacted with--genuinely nice staff here. the bar tending at the restaurant is solid. drinks are expensive, but good. lots of unfulfilled potential, as discussed below. cons: the hotel misses on basic competencies, which compounds the issues with its inconvenient location. and at these prices, it's hard to forgive the many lapses. for instance, at a shade under $1000 US per night, we couldn't take a hot shower after two calls seeking to address the issue. after a long wait, the shower would become slightly warm. this was, it seemed, the best we could get. a man explained in mostly signs (his English wasn't conversation level) that the water travels a long way to our room and it is what it is. while thermodynamically, I imagine he was right about the situation, I still didn't enjoy my shower. I've never had a worse one at any level hotel, even the airport hovel British airways forced us into when it cancelled our flight later in our trip. the location is also outside of Imerovigli, not in the town. so you're cab dependent if you want to go anywhere. and you do want to go other places because the pool area is very small (i.e., often full and without seating even in the May shoulder season), and the restaurant is very, very bad. worst omelette I've ever had in the morning, and they served us chicken that was inedible at lunch (like so gross and probably undercooked that we couldn't choke down a bite). they were apologetic and nice about it, but still I wish they could cook. we were very cab weary after our stay. it would be much more pleasant to stay in Imerovigli proper, I think. or oia maybe (but it would be more crowded). they don't seem to use a reliable taxi service. wait times were super long sometimes, and communication was often bad. also, they like to pool taxis so that they function more like buses. but they still charge full fares. it's annoying and takes a long time to pick up additional passengers sometimes. they really should provide free transport from the port or airport. at these prices, that would be a courtesy they ought to pay, but instead, it cost us 60 E to and from the port, on top of the many dollars we'd already spent on cabs. also, there's a chapel, but not a gym or any exercise area. and check in took like 25 minutes (after a grueling ferry ride when we just wanted to get to our rooms). cleaning, while thorough, also took close to an hour and occurred at inconvenient times for us. the bed was uncomfortable. the mattress seemed worn out and we fell into sort of deep holes in the bed. the jetted tub was lukewarm, with no apparent option to warm it up. jets stayed on for about 20 seconds at a time. we didn't get much use out of it. we tried using it one evening, but nearly froze when we tried to warm up in the shower afterward. we really thought this stay would be the highlight of our trip, but instead it was very frustrating and expensive. I hope you can learn from our mistakes and stay elsewhere (or skip Santorini and even Greece entirely--so many better places to go).

What an amazing place! We spent 3 nights in this lovely hotel, and it truly is a respite from the crowds of Santorini. You almost feel like you have the place to yourself! The attention to detail is impeccable, they even have a pillow menu for you to choose from 5 different types of pillows. It is worth noting it is not in any of the towns (closest to Imerovigli) and while they do have a transport it ends at 8:30 pm. So getting back from Fira or O??a at night can be tricky. We stayed in the junior suite and had a very large comfortable room and outside we had our own warm jacuzzi, beach chairs, and a table- so we could do indoor outdoor living perfectly!