Kavos. Greece's answer to Blackpool? (Kavos (Corfu))

Member Name: Scott Fowler

Product:	Kavos (Corfu)
Date:	01/08/02 (9445 review reads)
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Having recently returned from Kavos and having read a mixed bag of reviews about the resort I thought I'd throw my tuppence worth in.

Background -

Two friends and myself (we’re all 24 and male) were looking for somewhere to go on a ‘lad’s’ holiday. Our original choice of Malia fell through, as we couldn’t get anything for the dates we needed. What else have you got? We asked the Thomas Cook rep, and so we eventually decided on Kavos. I’d been to Corfu before and quite liked the Island (Kassiopi was my previous destination). Also I knew the prices weren’t too bad.
This is an important fact to bear in mind.

Kavos-

We were staying in the Sunrise Apartments, which are located about 1.5 miles outside Kavos itself. Probably a bit far to walk (there aren’t really any pavements and the local drivers are less than careful) but it was only 5 Euro for a taxi in. As this was a package holiday we arrived at our apartments at around 5 in the morning (this being the morning after the first lot of ¼ finals in the world cup). The next games kicked off at 9 am Kavos time and so there we were in the bar, with our first beer of the holiday at 9am. What with this ludicrously early starting time for drinking and the fact that come the Sat evening we’d had about 6 hours sleep in 2 and a half days we didn’t make it in to Kavos itself until the Sunday.

First impressions of Kavos were basically what I’d expected. Its pretty much one long street packed with bars, clubs and restaurants all competing for your valuable custom. The main form of competition coming in the form of ‘touts’ outside the bars. This is initially very annoying as we’d planned to check the place out, have a few drinks and head back in for a proper night out the following night. However some of the offers the bars had were too good to pass up – by one drink get five free, buy 1 cock
tail get a second free plus five shots (note when they say shots they mean some kind of watered down schnapps, but the cocktails were pretty good) and it was very hard to ignore all the ‘touts’. In the end we visited around 4 bars and became pretty inebriated, not such a bad thing really :)

The place doesn’t (contrary to many reports I have read) stink. It doesn’t have the best sewerage system in the world (no toilet paper is to be flushed down the loos – it all goes in small bins next to them), but the streets certainly aren’t flowing with raw sewerage. Price was I’d heard it was a bit steep and yes it is more expensive than the less built up areas, but if you shop around there are some good offers around. It was no more expensive to go for a night out in Kavos than it is in my home city of Edinburgh. The average price for a bottle of Amstel was 3 Euro, although it’s about 5 in the clubs. The likes of Bud and Becks were a bit more expensive, but we basically stuck to Amstel. It’s generally a good idea to have a couple of drinks before you go out – you can buy a crate of ½ Litre bottles of Amstel for 15 Euro.

Food - Kavos is not the place to go if your searching for great local cuisine (there’s a McDonalds for crying out loud!!), but we did manage to find quite a nice Indian/Chinese called “Puff the Magic Dragon” and a good Mexican next to it. I’ve forgotten the Mexican’s name but it is owned by the same people as “Puff’s”. There are a couple of decent Italians as well.

Sights and beaches – Kavos itself has no sights (unless you include bars), however there are numerous excursions available, either through your Rep or from travel ‘shops’. We didn’t actually go on any of these but a few people in our resort went on the Cruise ran by JMC and gave it rave reviews. As for beaches, well I’m not really a beach
person myself, much prefer a pool, but from what I saw of the beach I’d say you were probably better off with a pool. Not the best looking in the world.

Crowd – This is one of the most important parts of Kavos to note, what are the other people there like? Well, generally speaking everyone who goes to Kavos is either there on a ‘lads’ holiday or a ‘girls’ holiday. There are big groups of each roaming about the place (usually pretty drunk). Age wise, everyone seemed to be around 18-21, although we met quite a few who weren’t even 18, so in this respect even we were feeling a bit old (at the ripe old age of 24!).

Now this won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but for us it was fine – we wanted that kind of holiday and Kavos didn’t disappoint.

Reps – As I mentioned we booked with Thomas Cook and our holiday was through JMC. I was sceptical of the reps to say the least and we weren’t too keen to book up for any events (pub crawl etc). However as a way of avoiding the touts we decided to try out the pub-crawl. It was actually pretty darn good – there weren’t a lot of offers (apart from the ones the bars had on anyway) but as a way of meeting people and avoiding the touts it was great. We then booked up for a couple more (one had a free bar and a meal with free wine) and they were all in all value for money (I think for the three we ended up paying around 60 Euros each for the three). The Reps themselves were all a great laugh.

Resort-

As I mentioned we stayed at the Sunrise Apartments and this had been the other area of apprehension for me before embarking on our holiday. I’d heard some bad reports about apartments. I’m pleased to say they were absolutely fine though. They were basic (as pretty much everything is in Greece) but were clean and comfortable, my only slight complaint was there was no sitting room, only a kitchen, bat
hroom and two large bedrooms. We did however have a balcony so that was OK. The guy who runs them, Costas, and all his staff were pleasant and helpful (booking taxis etc). They also had a very nice pool and the resort backed out onto it own little beach, which was much nicer than the main one in Kavos. The resort also had it’s own small supermarket stocking all of the essentials (beer and water!!) which was pretty reasonably priced.

Conclusion –

Kavos will not be everyone’s idea of a good holiday destination and I can understand why people could hate it. However if you have a few friends and you’re looking for a place to basically drink yourself stupid and have a good old ‘boogie’ to some cheesy tunes (with a bit of garage thrown in for good measure) then I’d recommend Kavos to you. I don’t think I’ll be back (felt a bit old this year and I’m not going to feel any younger) but I did enjoy my fortnight there. I would not recommend Kavos to families or couples; it’s just not that kind of place.

I can also recommend travelling with JMC. The flights were both on time and passed without incident, the accommodation was good and the reps are excellent.

Oh almost forgot to mention the weather – it was really, really hot!!

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