Introduction to DIY Menorca Villa Holidays
If you fancy a Menorca villa holiday but are put off by the cost of booking with a travel agent – then you’re in the right place.
We have booked over 8 DIY Menorca Villa holidays at much lower costs than we’ve seen in travel brochures.
This blog tells you about our favourite places in Menorca and explains how we book fantastic villa holidays at great prices.
Contents
- Introduction to DIY Menorca Villa Holidays
- We Love Menorca
- How to Book a Lower Cost Menorca Villa Holiday
- Searching For Your Perfect Menorca Villa
- ✈️Flights
- 🌟 ‘Bookending’ Your Menorca Villa Stay
- 🚗 Menorca Car Rental
- Places We Recommend to Stay in Menorca
- Binibeca
- Cala Galdana
- Fornells
- Arenal d’en Castel
- Calan Porter
- Best Places to Visit in Menorca
- 🏖️ Menorca Beaches
- Waterparks
- Menorca Zoo
- Cuitadella and Mahon
- Other Things to Do
- Perfect For Families
- Useful Links
We Love Menorca
Our favourite family holiday destination has to be Menorca. Our children say, “although they love going to other places too, to them, Menorca is like coming home” (in a good way of course).
🪄 We have been on many villa holidays in Menorca over the years and we keep returning because there’s just something magical about this little island.
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How to Book a Lower Cost Menorca Villa Holiday
1. Visit Out of Season
Unfortunately, the prices for summer villa holidays in Menorca just keep rising, but prices out of season are much more affordable.
We have been in May half term and October half term. The weather is cooler but still warm enough to sunbathe – around 24 degrees.
🔗 Blog to read: Menorca in October.
2. Share the cost
Lots of villas are very large so if you have family or friends that you enjoy holidaying with you can book a villa that fits you all. We have shared villas with family to split the costs a few times.
3. Book Your Summer Villa Early
If you want to go in the summer holidays, a way you can keep costs down is firstly, to get your reservation in before everyone else.
🌟 Tip: Book a villa a year in advance so there’s plenty of choice and all the best value for money villas are still available.
Searching For Your Perfect Menorca Villa:
🔗 Blog to read: Bininbeca Menorca Villas: Tried and Tested!
Find the Cheapest Price
- Go on
www.booking.comand search for Menorca with your dates and details, put ‘villa’ and your other preferences in the ‘filter’ and ‘sort’ according to ‘lowest price’ – you will find the cheapest villas.
- Google the area and see if you like the sound of it.
- Once you’ve found an area that matches your requirements, you can look on other sites too to find the best prices.
🌟 We usually use Vrbo to book a villa because there’s loads of choice, even more than on booking.com. It’s not as easy to use but the benefits outweigh the downside.
See ‘Useful Links’ for other sites.
👉 SEARCH FOR MENORCA VILLA ON VRBO
✈️Flights
There are lots of flights to Menorca from the UK from airports all over the country. However, in our experience EasyJet is always the cheapest.
EasyJet flights to Menorca from the UK vary from year to year but are usually fairly reasonable, even in the summer months.
🌟 Tip: Return journeys tend to be more expensive around the end of August, so it is worth looking at going at the beginning of August, if you are restricted to the summer holidays.
👉 To find the cheapest flights - search on Skyscanner.
🌟 ‘Bookending’ Your Menorca Villa Stay:
Villa rentals are almost always Saturday to Saturday and quite often this means that flights are more expensive on Saturdays; sometimes triple the price of week day flights.
When this happens, don’t book the Saturday flights.
Fly out a couple of days before your villa rental date and again come back a few days later. Then ‘book end’ your villa stay with a cheap hotel or apartment rental.
Quite often, we do this in different areas of Menorca so we get to stay in places we haven’t explored before.
This may seem like madness but it actually saves us money.
Saturday flights for 5 people can typically cost our family an extra £1000. Booking a cheap hotel or apartment either end, means we get a longer holiday.
We spend the extra £1000 that a Saturday flight would have cost, on having more fun, rather than sitting on an expensive plane seat for an hour!
Again, it pays to book early because Menorca is extremely popular and accommodation is very scarce if left to the last minute.
You can book your short stay on booking.com.
‘Bookending’ your stay is not always necessary but it is a good tactic if needs be.
🚗 Menorca Car Rental
If you are happy to drive abroad it is a great idea to rent a car when in Menorca.
👉 We use www.arguscarhire.com and www.rentalcars.com to compare prices.
Renting a car means you can explore, go to the supermarket and not have to book transfers.
🌟 Tip: Menorca has great roads and is easy to navigate. It only takes one hour to drive the length of the island.
Places We Recommend to Stay in Menorca
The prices of villa rentals vary depending on the area you choose.
There are loads of areas to stay in Menorca and I haven’t been anywhere I haven’t liked yet; each area has its own charm.
We have stayed in Binibeca, Cala Galdana, Arenal d’en Castell, Fornells and Calan Porter.
Binibeca
Our favourite place to stay has to be Binibeca. It is a lovely area, full of white villas overlooking the sea.
It has a pretty fishing village with restaurants and a few bars and a beautiful beach.
Sadly, the wonderful beach restaurant has been forced to close but there are alternative places to buy a drink or snack, just a short walk away.
🚂 There is a land train that takes you to another area called Punta Prima, which has a lovely beach.
Binibeca is extremely laid back. We can quite happily spend our days just relaxing on the beach or by the pool, topped off with a Pomada; a slush puppy style Menorcan gin. Later, a tapas dinner in one of the many restaurants with outdoor seating areas in the centre.
Cala Galdana
Cala Galdana has a popular stunning beach, surrounded by limestone cliffs.
You can take a walk through the forest to other hidden beaches, such as Cala Macarelleta.
There is a great choice of accommodation, including hotels, villas and apartments and many restaurants and bars to choose from.
We enjoyed our stay here and visit the gorgeous beach every time we come to Menorca.
Fornells
Fornells has a large natural harbour and is an old fishing village. It is a popular area for sailing and you can hire boats or kayaks.
We have stayed in 2 hotels here. We particularly enjoyed our stay at Carema Club Resort. The rooms were light and spacious and there was lots of entertainment for the children, which they loved.
We were not keen on the beach in this area but we did enjoy the sunsets.
Again, there are plenty of restaurants and bars to choose from.
The properties here are very pretty and it has a unique charm.
Arenal d’en Castel
The apartment complex that we stayed in at Arenal was extremely reasonable for Menorca.
It is called Las Belisas Apartmentos.
The apartment was bright and cheerful and only a short walk from the beach.
The price reflected the short comings like no aircon and we had a few problems but the owner was wonderful and did everything she could to ensure we had a pleasant stay.
The swimming pool and gardens were lovely and it even had an area for rescue tortoises. It was perfect as a ‘bookend’ to our villa stay.
Arenal d’en Castel has a large beautiful bay. You can enjoy the calm water, sunbathe on the golden sand and dine in the many restaurants overlooking the bay.
Calan Porter
Calan Porter is one of the favourite areas in Menorca. It has a pretty white sand beach, blue clear water surrounded by limestone cliffs.
There are villas, apartments, hotels and a small centre with two supermarkets, restaurants and bars.
🌟 Tip: It also benefits from a fantastic cave nightclub.
Best Places to Visit in Menorca
🔗 Blog to read: 10 Best Things to Do in Menorca
🏖️ Menorca Beaches
The main reason to visit Menorca are its many glorious beaches. There are so many beaches in Menorca (over 80) that you could spend weeks there and not get to see them all!
Menorca was declared a biosphere reserve by UNESCO in 1993. This means that the conservation of nature and landscapes are of upmost importance and it is an area of outstanding natural beauty.
🌟 Tip: It is worth renting a car and travelling around the island so you can see all the wonderful beaches.
Some of our favourites are Son Bou, Cala Turqueta, Cala Galdana, Cala Macarelleta and Cala Mitjana.
We took a full day boat trip from Ciutadella to visit some of the best beaches, which included a paella lunch, served on the boat:
Son Bou
Another area we always visit but have not stayed yet, is Son Bou.
Son Bou has a gorgeous, long, light sand beach, with shallow crystal clear water.
🌟 Tip: Son Bou has some of the best sunsets on the island.
Waterparks
There are a few water parks with all the usual pools, slides and lazy rivers. Our favourite water parks are Aqua Centre, near Ciutadella and Splash Sur in Punta Prima.
⚠️ Update – Sadly Sur Splash has been forced to close.
Aqua Centre is smaller and pretty with a lovely café – good for young families.
Menorca Zoo
At Lloc de Menorca you have the opportunity to hold enormous snakes and reptiles, feed goats and walk amongst lemurs.
Our children love the interactive experience here and always insist we visit.
Cova d’en Xoroi
Cova d’en Xoroi is a series of huge caves that have been renovated. They are open to view during the day and are a fantastic nightclub by night.
🍹 You can drink cocktails watching the sunset and then dance to the early hours of the morning.
Cuitadella and Mahon
There are two main cities you can visit, Ciutadella in the north and Mahon in the south. Both are small and pretty, with harbours, shops, restaurants, bars and beautiful architecture.
Cuitadella used to be the capital of Menorca until the British took over in the 18th century.
At the end of our holiday, we always visit the capital, Mahon because it is close to the airport.
Mahon has a natural deep harbour where you can see cruise ships dock. We enjoy our last day here shopping in the market and maybe a trip around the harbour on the glass bottomed boat.
Other Things to Do
There are lots of other activities you can enjoy on this beautiful island.
- Menorca has ancient ruins to explore and hills to climb.
- Water sports, boat trips and scuba diving are popular.
- There are fiestas with magnificent horse shows at certain times of the year.
- Menorca produces delicious cheeses and gin, which you can taste and see how they are made.
- Also, they make traditional shoes in array of amazing colours and you can visit the factory outlets.
Perfect For Families
The main reason we love Menorca is that it is fabulous for families because it is peaceful and tranquil.
Unlike its sister islands, Ibiza and Mallorca, there is no party scene in Menorca, so apart from Cova D’en Xoroi, if you like to go clubbing, it is not the right choice of holiday destination for you.
🌟 Tip: If you are interested in visiting Menorca, a great group to join on Facebook is ‘Love Menorca’, there you will find photos, restaurant recommendations and even accommodations to rent.
Most people on the group have been coming to Menorca for years and have fallen in love with it as much as we have.
Hopefully, after reading this, you will come and visit and fall in love too!
Useful Links
www.menorcaprivateowners.co.uk
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