When you're a student and your purse seems to have holes in it, a holiday becomes less of a plan and more of a fantasy. Desperate to make a holiday happen, I worked solidly throughout summer- motivated that at the end of it all, I WILL get that holiday.
My friend, Ruby and I decided we will have a small budget and make wherever we go a relaxing and blissful break away from all that hard work. So, two weeks before we planned to go, we booked a holiday for a mere £160- including our accommodation, flights, luggage and transfers through Olympic holidays to (judge if you may), Kavos. Notoriously famous for being a wasteland of drunken Brits falling out of Irish pubs (in Greece may I add), our desire for a holiday was clearly off the scale of desperation. So determined to avoid the endless armies of 'lads on tour', we boarded a plane to Corfu for a wishful week of sun, sea, sand, and lots of Greek food.
I suppose the point of this post is to say that a cheap last minute holiday to a party resort is possible to do nicely. Our accommodation was very basic but huge (plenty of room for dancing), it had a balcony, and a nice pool area with a cheap bar. Not that we drank a lot like the rest of the resort (we had as much as wine at dinner), but the soft drinks were reasonably priced too. We stayed at the Oula Maisonettes- just on the outskirts of Kavos but within walking distance to amenities like restaurants, the beach, and a supermarket.
After a day round the pool on the first day, we ventured to the beach on day two in a bid to find a nice area of beach that didn't look grimy. By luck, we found a bar which had an area of beach and a pool that looked more Marbella than Kavos from it's white and seemingly upmarket design. To be honest, I think we went there most days just because it didn't fit in with its surroundings, tricking us into thinking we paid more for this holiday than we actually did.
Next door to this pool/beach area, was undeniably our favourite restaurant. Called the Falconera, it was a beautifully traditional Greek restaurant run by a girl we described as a cross between Leah Jenner and Whitney Port. The Greek salad was the best, and in our time there we got free bread and houmous (the best I've ever had) and free coconut and orange cake on our last night. It is one of the oldest restaurants in resort, but the interior and menu has a contemporary twist that distinguished itself highly in comparison to others. It was like a little bit of luxury on our cheap trip! Plus, the food was incredible.
Despite being on a budget, we managed to scrape back a few euros for something other than food. In the middle of our holiday, we went on a boat trip to the Blue Lagoon- described as turquoise, crystal clear waters that has been featured in many films. On our way, the weather wasn't particularly promising as it resembled more England than Greece. With our towels round our heads sheltering us from the shower of choppy waves and rain, we hopped on the boat on the way to Sivota on mainland Greece. If you ignored the weather, Sivota was a lovely little village with cute outdoor restaurants, cafes, and gelato shops. We decided to do an ice cream stop and take lots of photos of the picturesque landscape which displays a more calm version of the sea we previously experienced.
With the sunshine peaking through the clouds, we headed to the Blue Lagoon for a swim with the fishes. As soon as we arrived the sun came out and it was absolutely amazing. I don't think we ever got out the water apart from jumping off the boat! There was so many fish! Due to the crystal clear water, it was a perfect moment to try out my new GoPro and here are the results…
Another one of our adventures on our budget holiday was renting out a quad bike for the day to explore the rest of Corfu's beaches. Not one for the faint-hearted, it was quite scary at times and it is pretty dangerous, but hey, we survived! We found a quiet beach on the other side of the island which had a beautiful sandy shore and lots of elderly people (haha). Even though we were the youngest there, it was a nice break from being round a pool bar listening to music so the silence was actually super relaxing.
I made a video for this holiday from all the footage we took on my GoPro which was so fun! I'll make another post for it soon. I think we proved to ourselves and everyone we know how easy and cheap it is to do a decent, relaxing beach holiday on a very cheap budget. There was obviously some things that you would expect on a holiday this price such as, rubbish flight times and very British resorts, but you can definitely ignore this if you try (and indeed we did).
I'm definitely going to do a last minute holiday more often!
x
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