Kaiki Beach

Kaiki is the beach you can walk to. It sits on the coast between Dapia and the Old Harbour, a small cove of pebble and pale grit with genuinely exceptional water clarity, and it is the reason nobody staying in Spetses town needs to hire anything to get a swim.

Locals still call it the students’ beach, a name it picked up because of the boarding school just above it, whose pupils used this cove as their swimming spot. The name stuck long after the arrangement changed. What sits there now is a fully organised beach club, and the contrast between the old nickname and the current sunbed rates is one of the small ironies of modern Spetses.

What is genuinely good

The water. It is the clearest of the easily reached beaches on the island, a pale turquoise over the light bottom that looks almost artificial in photographs and is not. It shelves fairly quickly, which is part of why it stays so clean.

The walk. Fifteen minutes or so along the coast from the harbour, mostly flat, past mansions and small boatyards. It is a pleasant walk in itself and you can do it in sandals. On an island where the good beaches are a moped ride away, having one at the end of a stroll is worth a lot.

The organisation. Loungers, parasols, showers, a bar, food, music at a reasonable volume, and staff who will bring you a drink. If your idea of a beach day involves not moving, this delivers it.

And now the honest part

It is expensive, and it is the beach on Spetses where you feel the island’s prices most sharply. A pair of sunbeds with a parasol for the day here costs meaningfully more than the same thing on Agia Paraskevi, and the drinks are priced to match the yacht crowd. There is a minimum-spend culture at organised beaches like this and it is worth asking what the arrangement is before you settle in.

It is small. The usable strip is short, and the loungers take up most of it. Free space for a towel is limited and disappears early on an August day. If you want to lie on your own mat with no outlay, this is not the beach for it.

It is pebbles, not sand, and some of them are large enough to be uncomfortable. The entry to the water has rock. Water shoes.

There is essentially no natural shade. Buy the parasol or come outside the middle of the day.

It gets noise from the road and from boat traffic. It is a town beach in every sense. The sense of escape you get at Zogeria is entirely absent here, and it would be dishonest to pretend otherwise.

Getting there

On foot from Dapia, heading east along the coast road towards the Old Harbour. Fifteen minutes at an unhurried pace, largely flat, with the sea on your right most of the way.

By horse carriage from the harbour if you want the experience, though for a distance this short it is a novelty rather than transport, and you should agree the fare before you get in.

By moped it is a few minutes and there is limited space to leave it near the entrance.

The plan we recommend

Treat Kaiki as the swim you fit around the rest of the day rather than the destination. Walk out from town in the late afternoon when the day-club energy has dropped and the light on the water is at its best, swim, then carry on east on foot to the Old Harbour for dinner by the boatyards. That is a very good Spetses evening and it costs you nothing but a swim and a meal.

If you want a proper beach day with space around you, take a boat to the south coast instead. Our page on going around the island by boat covers the alternatives.