Beaches of Halkidiki

40° 2′ 16.6956” N 23° 21′ 40.8996” E

17th July 2021

The Haldiki area is proud of its many fine beaches, particularly the ones on the three peninsulas, Kassandra, Sithonia and Athos. If you follow the recommendations of e.g. TripAdvisor, you will find many of the best. However, places with many reviews typically also has many guests visiting. Here is instead a one-family based comparison of all beach from Sani to Siviri – because we tried them all.

Sani beach
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The Sani area is very luxurious, with five star hotel resorts. The resorts own some parts of the beach, and unless you live there, you are unlikely to be permitted rent beach chairs. However, not all of Sani beach is hotel owned: for example the middle part close to the pirate themed bar, where external visitors also can get a beach chair. Regardless of location, the sand is of the same fine white quality all along, with virtually no rocks or pebbles. Together with Siviri, Sani is the place with most visitors, even when considering the longer length of the beach – it can still feel somewhat crowded. An advantage particular to this beach is that it is the only place where one can rent small sailing dingies.

Simantra Beach
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Simantra Beach is a part of the resort of the same name, but their beach chairs only occupy half of the long beach. Besides, they seem welcoming to external visitors. I don’t think they’ve had many visitors during the pandemic. We didn’t use the beach chairs, since our main goal was to rent a paddle-boat with water slide. They cost 15€ per hour, like at Sani beach. An advantage particular to this beach, which is also called Golden Beach, is the small turtle-pond, where dozens of small turtles lives. The kids really love to watch those.

Chelona beach
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The smallest beach, halfway between Sani and Siviri. As the only of these five locations, there is no hotel in the area behind the beach. The only facility is a small wooden beach bar named Χελώνα Beach Bar. They serve excellent slush-ice drinks and light lunch. I think this beach is the most charming, probably because it’s the one with the least amount of visitors. Also, I like that it is the only place open to serve water to early morning joggers. That’s because the bartenders sleep behind the bar in sleeping bags at night, and if they are anyway awake in the morning they are happy to chat. I think the people who works there really like the place and are proud of it.

Elani
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A small beach that is completely filled out with beach chairs from the local resort of the same name. As with Simantra Beach, however, they seem welcoming to external visitors. Probably the pandemic has also limited their number of guests. If you go here, pay attention to the complex beach chair numbering system and pick one that is not labelled as either “hotel” or “reserved”. There are two hotel-owned restaurants by the beach, we ate on the one on the small green hill north of the beach. They didn’t have any other customers, likely because of the big “entry forbidden” sign at their entrance (which we only saw on the way out).

Siviri
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The long beach by Siviri town. Siviri is a charming vacation town, with many very good restaurants, which we enjoyed many evenings. They were always welcoming, no bookings necessary (unlike Sani) and they had nice service and delicious fish. Some younger members of the family felt we could have spent more money on the local Tivoli attractions (1-euro bouncing cars) and others preferred larger prawns. Charming, nonetheless. Also worth a special mention is the local SCUBA diving center, Seavery, offering proficient and safe service. Our 9 year old crew member tried her first dive here. So all in all the facilities of Siviri are topnotch. The beach itself we didn’t use so much, however. It seems awfully crowded and rarely did we spot a vacant rental beach chair, let alone a place that was not swamped with other beach goers. Also the water seemed a bit murky, which the local dive center biologist attributed to algae bloom due to exceptionally high water temperatures.

Transport
All five beaches can be reached by boat or car, the three middle ones however require some fairly rough driving. Drive carefully, particularly on the steep gravel roads. Additionally all beaches are reachable from their neighbors along coastal walking paths. The paths are strenuous, but spectacular. Don’t bring strollers or wheel chairs if you attempt these routes, but do enjoy the great views from the high cliffs. And if you like to run – it’s also great for that.