9 Muses Hotel Skala Beach

The 9 Muses hotel is Fabulous. Great, exceptionally clean rooms, beautiful views, fantastic pool areas and helpful, friendly and informative staff (Mickey the barman and Panaygioutus were soo kind). Me and my boyfriend travelled to Skala at the end of August. We are both young (23 &26) and I had some concerns that the area would be tooo quiet for us- however we found there to be plenty of restaurants (Symposium being our favourite), enough bars (Captains bar, Sally's bar and the hotel bar among our regular haunts) and enough trips to keep us occupied. The only downsides (and believe me they had no effect on the quality of our holiday) was that the breakfast was pretty bland and that on our third day the cash machine in Skala stopped working meaning we had to take a taxi to Poros (15 euros each way) to get some money out. I highly recommend this hotel- I have already convinced my parents to visit next year, and I am sure I will visit again. Regards, Nicola

Nice place, very clean and easy. Negative points: breakfast, safety box in the room and beach was not included in the price.Internet is available for 3 Euro/hour and there is only one PC at the lobby.No wireless. The breakfast is below expectations for a 4 star hotel. To reach the beach need to cross the street

Fantastic place!! It's all smiles at the Nine Muses Hotel! I would recommend this place on the (1) The location-it's very quiet but within a 2min walk to the beach and 10 min walk into town. (2) Facilities-two fantastic pools, one of with is hidden at the backof the hotel. The resturant at the front of the hotel is fantastic-the service is second-to-none! One of the best in Skala. The only downside is the breakfast-not much too choose from! (3) The staff were very welcoming right from the offset. They make you feel at home and always say hello when passing.It might sound trivial but it did make a difference. By the end of our holiday i couldn't stop saying hello and thank you :-) Ok breifly onto Skala itself. Not a huge town but enough to keep you occupied for a week. Plenty of bars and resturants with very reasonable prices(about £15 per head with a bottle of Greek table wine) Try the Italian resturant-it was fantastic! There is also a fancy looking resturant on the seafront called Symposium,with live singing and a guy on the piano. It looked good but didn't live up to it's classy image IMO. If you fancy a cocktail then head for captains Bar and also Sally's Garden bar is great for sitting outside in a realxing enviroment. There is also plenty of gift shops with the usual knick-knacks and fake football shirts. There is also a cash machine which i used,cars and bikes for rent,3 supermarkets,crazy golf,watersports,roman ruins and a horse-drawn carrige ride which we missed! All-in-all a great friendy relaxing holiday without the tacky bits! ideal for couples-not too much to do for the kids though! Enjoy email me if you have any questions! mat176@yahoo.co.uk

Stayed at the Nine Muses for two weeks B&B from 18 July 2006. What a wonderful place for rest and relaxation. The hotel location sits right on the beach. The restaurant overlooks the beautiful Ionian Sea so you have stunning views while eating breakfast. The hotel facilities and staff are second to none. We have never stayed in a place where the staff are so friendly and helpful. The pool is a delight and it does not get over crowded and only a few children! Certainly Trip Advisor got it absolutely right in terms of the 5 Star rating given in the reviews. A perfect place for a beach holiday. The village of Skala is small but has a multitude of restaurants, my particular favourites were the Symposium and the new Italian, Il Destino. Great food and lovely surroundings. Would also recommend the three Island trip by boat to enjoy Island hopping to other smaller Islands close by such as Scorpios and Lefkada. Overall the Nine Muses was a real success and a perfect holiday retreat which we hope to repeat in coming years.

I've traveled to many places throughout the world including several islands in Greece. I have never had a more relaxing and pleasurable experience then teh one I had at the 9 Muses Hotel. It was the cleanest, friendliest and most accomodating resort in my 20 years of traveling. Im actually writing this review from one of their internet kiosks. I leave on Sunday and will be very upset when i do.

I think the positive reviews of this hotel are well deserved and I am pretty tough reviewer. Basically, the hotel is probably the best in its price range & I would doubt you will find a much better hotel: the position is ideal (next to the beach, other restaurants & 100 metres from the town centre), rooms are very comfortable, excellent fixtures (great shower!), lovely buildings & gardens were well kept & excellent pool. I was suprised it had a sandy beach (albeit course sand), as I had previously read it had a stone beach. The cliental were almost entirely English & we did not go in the school holidays, but it seemed predominantly full of people aged 40-60 years old (with a few exceptions either side). I found the other guests to be very unintrusive (which was good!). People did not want to chat, unless you wanted to talk. Also, there was very little of reserving sunbeds (which is a pet hate of mine). There was always a sunbed free - even in the peek of the day & the hotel was at capacity during our visit. Whilst I would not disagree with any of the other positive reviews, in the interests of objectivity some of the negatives for us were (although these are minor points really): 1) Slightly disappointing breakfast - perfectly adequate & some might say there is nothing wrong with it, but we felt there was not much variety. It is just a cold buffet - very average. However, Aeloas restaurant seemed very good (probably the best meal we had during our holiday). 2) Personally I do like a TV in room, which it had (but an old 15 inch portable!). It had a few channels (BBC world, Sky news & some films channel, which showed movies & subtitles in Greek. However, reception in our room was very poor, which was irritating. 3) Shame Greece has not yet updated its plumbing system, much to my wife's surprise that she had to put toilet paper in a bin! 4) Take towels with you as these were not provided by the hotel. 5) Although this point is a bit more vague - it is a very package holiday destination. Although there was nothing wrong with the resort of Skala & it is apparently one of the best resorts in Kephalonia, I am afraid that it really did not do it for me - it is quite steep (but as mentioned the hotel is as well positioned as it could be). Weather was 40 C every day (late june) - don't know if this is typical, but a bit too hot for us. Overall, despite there being really nothing wrong with the hotel, we were bored after a couple of days. Honestly, we just felt there was nothing there for us - it just wasn't our cup of tea. Nevertheless, if beach holidays are your thing, then I would recommend it. Also, First Choice are a bit cheeky! When you get to the resort they tell you that if you don't purchase prebooked seating on the return journey (9 euros each at the time of writing) then you have to wait outside the airport (in the blazing sun, making you feel like a second class citizen!). This was not the case on our journey back, but others may have different experiences. People only seemed to wait outside for 5 minutes or so. Still I think this is a scam to fleece people out of a bit more money.

Skala is a new resort with an old 'feel'. The original Skala was a mountain village but in 1953 there was a terrible earthquake in Kephalonia and 90% of the houses were destroyed. Can you imagine the scale of such a catastrophe and the devastation of so many lives. This is why in Kephalonia you will meet Greeks from all over the world; Australian Greeks, South African Greeks, American Greeks and so on. They are the children and grandchildren of people who emigrated after the earthquake and who have now returned to their roots. English with the appropriate accent s is spoken all over the island and the 2nd language taught in school is English so we felt right at home even though they were very tolerant when we attempted to speak Greek. After the quake the village was abandoned and moved to the edge of the sparkling blue sea. Each family in the mountain village was given a prefabricated wooden house and an acre of land by the sea and some of these houses can still be found in the village. Some of the acres are now worth £100,000 as the resort has grown up. However in respect to the power of Mother Nature no house or building is above 3 storeys and the foundations go very deep, both in buildings and in the people. Kephalonian people are amongst the most welcoming and friendly in the world. They want to share with you their green and beautiful island and go out of the way to make your stay happy and rewarding. Most tourists we met were return visitors who come back every year for their little slice of tranquillity and sunshine. Because all the buildings are new they have all mod cons and the new buildings reflect the traditional style of Kephalonia. The 9 muses hotel is a perfect example of this, being built in traditional style but with a modern touch. The owners and staff make sure everything about your stay will make you want to come back again and again and it is a style of management that many boring and featureless hotels around the world should adopt. However within this lovely setting we were allocated the worse possible room on our arrival. It was Room 116. The room itself is spacious and well furnished but its setting on the ground floor at the back of the complex was awful. It overlooked the car park and the large rubbish skips of several properties. It was like spend a holiday in a supermarket car park with the bin men waking you every morning at 6.30 am. We complained but due to the popularity of the hotel it was fully booked until the next change over one week later. So we had to endure it for a whole week before we could be moved. I was in tears as this was not the holiday I wanted. However I week later they moved us and what a difference this made. The new room was everything we could have wished for now only the birds woke us and we could see the sea from our balcony. Having the facility to make tea and coffee and having a small fridge was great and some days we went to the bar at lunch time and got a huge take-away salad and brought it back to sit and eat it on our balcony. The drinks and food at the pool side bar was the same price as everywhere else in the village unlike so many other hotels around the world. It is a hotel that caters mainly for adults and it was nice not to have to deal with screaming kids and worry about accidents as there are many small sets of steps and sharp corners and the pool is deep at both ends. People book next year's holiday whilst they are having the present one which is a testimony to the quality of the hotel. I would recommend without reservation the trips you can go on with Panem Tours who have an office on the main street of Skala. With the roads being so mountainous and tortuous it means the driver of a hire car gets to see little of the island. Panems tours are cheaper that hiring a car we paid £160 for tours and a c ar would have cost £250 for a week to do the same tours. We went on 4 trips including a trip over to Ithaka for the day, an all island trip up to Fiskardo in the north which includes the underground lake of Mellisani (spectacular doesn’t begin to cover it). A tour of the southern part of the island which took in the Robola Winery, where you learned just what to do to taste wine rather than throw it down your throat with expert instructions from Bill from Yorkshire!!, and finally a trip to the capital Argostoli for the shopping. All the trips had plenty of interesting stops, an English guide throughout and because Panem’s coaches are quite small they took us to places the large tour buses could not reach.Much better to travel in air conditioned luxury than getting lost and poring over maps There are loads of restaurants and tavernas throughout the village but on day 2 we found one we loved on the main street. It used to be called Zorbas but now it is called the Old Village and it is tucked behind the block which contains Veronica Jewellery store. The food was out of this world and so cheap it did not dent the pocket too much. They make a Kephalonian meat pie to an old recipe of the owner’s grandmother and my husband ate it nearly every night because he loved it so much and it cost about £3.00 for a hugh plateful. They have a lot of interesting items on display that were recovered from the old village of Skala hence the restaurant’s name. Nico the head waiter looks like a 6ft 3 inch version of Elvis and is such a nice chap with a dazzling smile. Say hello from Brenda and Frank if you ever meet him. Skala with its pine trees on the long sandy beach will linger long in our hearts and I have no doubt we will also return again. I can really recommend the hotel and the resort for the perfect holiday to forget your cares in the sunshine and turquoise seas. I am preparing a DVD of the hundreds of wonderful images I took on the Islands so contact me if you would like one sent to you

Could not fault the 9 Muses Hotel at Skala beach. Friendly and helpful staff. Everywhere exceptionally clean and tidy ( rooms and outside walkways and garden areas). In fact the whole complex is well designed. Buffet breakfast very good. Good positon near the beach and a short walk into town. We (myself, wife and son) did not do everything we wanted to in one week so we came back home and booked the 9 Muses for another week next year! Unheard of for us to return to the same resort and hotel two years running!

A fantastic holiday in a delightful hotel. Clean apartments friendly staff & efficient. Rooms cleaned daily, linien changed twicew a week. Fresh flowers placed in room. Friendly greeting every morning, even more if you try to communicate in greek. Hotel feels spacious with 2 pools and bars. The weather always helps in this case it was continually hoty and sunny for 2 weeks!. Restaurant attached aslo good (Aeleos). Plenty of sun beds by the pools but we're not great sun worshippers, although the heat eventually forced us to succomb to the cooling waters. The amount of return visitors must mean something and even more so when the car hire man is an ex pat who now lives in kefalonia, people soon get hooked!

Just got back from a weeks hoilday at nine muses in skala. The hotel,staff,rooms, and island were fantastic. I can,nt find anything bad to say about our stay just perfect. Kefalonia is a very pretty island and has alot of history so my advise is to book the three island tour [which we did with first choice]. We want to a monastry and next door was were they make there famous robola wine [very nice]. Then we want to the dolmites cave which was well worth it when you see the view. The next stop was a beautiful lake then onto a view of myrotis beach which again is spectacular then onto Fiskardo, which is a little fishing harbour. The trip it self is really good but the best was our rep marina who was full of information and storys she was really lovely. We also did a meze in poros at Makkis restaurant again booked with first choice which was really good. When went to agostali the capatial for shopping. Skala itself is a quiet resort a few bars and restaurants. We enjoyed our stay at nine muses very helpful and kind people the hotel is just lovely, the rooms were nice and the grounds of the hotel were nice too. I would recomend this more for couples as there is not much to do for young children. There are some lovely places too eat , Auqatics near the chinese was our favourite, marina our tour guide,s husband and bother-in-law run it and it was definetly the best houmous and spagetti with lobster that i,ve had, they also do traditional greek dishes. There is also a lovely bakery that did fresh cheese pie,s and sausage rolls and fresh bread and greek cakes. You can proberly tell that we put on a few pounds over the week. We fell in love with Kefalonia and the Nine Muses so if you are going we hope you love it just as much as we did. We will definetly be going again soon.