Plane Spotting at Amaretto Cafe in Skiathos, Greece

One of the things that are really cool about the Greek Islands is being able to plane spot up close.

How cool is this? Planespotting from a cafe?

Dutchman and I have plane spotted in many islands in Greece and our favourite (well, at least mine) so far was our experience in Corfu in the Ionian Islands. We stood on this water dike behind the airport which is used as a pathway as well to connect the basin. The planes fly above it as they land. From the dike, we could see the belly of the plane up close when it flies above us.

Here in Skiathos, the experience is quite similar, although the planes fly much lower (low landing) because the airport runway is just across the road from the Amaretto Cafe where people stand on the parking area to plane spot. The airport runway is literally just behind the cafe, like 100-200 meters.

The Amaretto Cafe is synonymous with plane spotting in Skiathos. It has a list of planned daily arrivals and departures posted on a big LCD screen inside the cafe. I guess the owner realised he is in a niche cafe market and decided to exploit the idea, and rightly so.

This cafe is also a great place to wait and kill time, either wait to pick up incoming vacationers or kill time and enjoy the last hour’s holiday on the island with a booze.

I find the surroundings of the airport and the Amaretto Cafe very idyllic. The pictures above are not lying and show that paradise is just a few hundred meters away after you step out of the plane. And this isn’t even the best part of Skiathos just yet. There is actually a beach just north of the airport which we discovered during our scooter-discovery-tour. I will post this another time.

The airport is also not too far away from the old town center. It can even be easily reached on foot, although not a very handy option though if you have to lug a suitcase and walk under the heat of the scorching summer sun. Better take a transfer service.

So one day, Dutchman and I came back to the airport to do some plane spotting. Dutchman loved airplanes. He was once an avid plane spotter in during his younger years and even travelled in the continent just to (military) plane spot. It still is a serious hobby now but carried out in the comforts of his computer screen (Flight Tracker anyone?).

We settled ourselves outside on the carpark of the Amaretto Cafe waiting for our first plane. The next few planes on the list will be a departure, and for better filming, the Dutchman decided to get closer. He scrambled across the street and jumped over to the outer fence of the airport to be near the action. I warned him to get out but men can be horribly stubborn sometimes. Well, I was right! He was almost blown away by the fiery blast of the aircraft! He’s lucky the fence held him tight, otherwise, he could have been really physically blown far away!

We managed to take 2 short videos of the departures:

The TUI plane taking off.

Thomas Cook plane taking off.

After the scary blast, the Dutchman took heed and moved to the carpark of the cafe.

We were able to see a few landings as well from airline companies we barely knew existed. Huh? Enter? Have you heard of an airline or an aviation brand or called “Enter”?

The bigger and country carrier airlines we know of do not really fly to smaller cities and holiday destinations such as the Greek Islands. These are usually serviced by smaller country-specific and charter companies during the warmer seasons. Hence the funky names I guess.

Here are 2 short videos of the arrivals:

Our first arrival plane to spot.

Meridiana plane arrival.

I think the arrivals spotting was more dramatic than the departures because the planes fly really low above you and you can hear all the loud buzzing noise when the aircraft hit the tarmac. It’s so real and so close. You get the strong aircraft blast, though, with the departures. It’s funny to see people struggling to hold themselves together from being blown away.

We really had a fun plane spotting afternoon here at Skiathos Airport. Because of its location, it’s a very unique airport to plane spot and we are quite happy with that =)

Dutchman promised that we will do plane spotting in the Netherlands as well. Schiphol Airport here we come! He knows a couple of places to hang out in the outskirts to catch epic plane views. We shall see!