Poda
Lounge Bar

Poda is built around one image, and it is a good one. Along the water it hangs a run of daybeds on nets and low platforms so they sit just above the shallows, and because the sea at Ksamil is so clear you appear to be floating on the turquoise itself, the small islets a short swim beyond. It is a piece of set design as much as furniture, framed against a boutique hotel behind and the pale bays around it, and it has turned Poda into one of the most photographed corners of the Albanian Riviera. The styling knows exactly what the camera wants and gives it, cleanly.

The honest read, and the line we take on the Albanian Riviera directory, is that Poda buys you Ksamil at its best and then charges the coast’s steepest prices for it. The water genuinely lives up to the pictures and the kitchen is a real one, but this is the most commercial, most crowded and most expensive stretch on the riviera, and how much you enjoy Poda comes down almost entirely to when you arrive.

The net beds are the whole design idea, and they work. Suspended a hand’s width above water so clear it barely registers as wet, they turn a sunbed into the picture everyone at Ksamil is chasing, with the islets floating just beyond your feet. For a design eye it is the single most effective thing any club on this coast has built, and if you can get one early it is genuinely lovely. The catch is the rate, the steepest on the beach, and the fact that everyone else wants the same shot.

Here is where the pictures quietly mislead. The Poda in the photographs is the Poda of first light, when the bay is glass calm and the beds sit empty over still water. By late morning in August the reality is a packed run of loungers, arriving boats and music, the sand all but gone beneath the beds, exactly the pattern our Ksamil beach guide warns of across the whole resort. The water still delivers. The lounging often does not, and visitor reviews regularly flag tired or dusty beds and patchy service when the club is slammed.

Which leaves the value question, and it is a fair one. Poda is a real restaurant with a seafood kitchen people rate, in one of the prettiest settings on the riviera, and priced accordingly at the top of a coast that is no longer the bargain it was. If clear water and a good plate matter more to you than the bill, and you time it away from the midday peak, it earns its keep. If you want the same turquoise with room to breathe, the quieter coves just outside the centre are the smarter play.

Ksamil is a cluster of small bays near Saranda at the southern tip of the riviera, where the Ionian turns a clear, shallow turquoise and a handful of low islets sit a short swim from shore. It is the postcard of the coast and, in peak season, its most developed and crowded corner, wall to wall with sunbed operators of which Poda is one of the smarter. The swim is the real prize here, best at dawn before the boats arrive, and our full Ksamil beach guide covers the islet crossings, the quieter neighbouring coves and how to dodge the worst of the crush.

Ksamil lies about fifteen minutes south of Saranda, reached by a regular bus along the coast road or by car, though parking near the bays fills fast and is paid through the summer, so an early start or the bus is the calmer arrival. Poda sits on the Gjiri i Podës cove with its boutique hotel behind it, and hotel guests reach the sand directly. Booking runs through Poda’s own site and social channels, and for a net bed or a table in high summer it is worth securing rather than trusting to a walk up.

Want a lounger, or one of the net beds, held before you reach Ksamil? Add your date and group size to the form here, and we will put it to Poda for you, then come back on what is free, what the beds run that week and whether the spots over the water are available, at no cost to you.