STF Tjärö Hotell & Vandrarhem

We spent 3 nights onTjärö. I'll break my review down into sections for you: The Island: Fantastic island with no cars that is close to the mainland, only 15 mins by a passenger ferry. We visited in one of the peek weeks in July and it does get busy in the day because people know they can eat at the restaurant for lunch and then go back maybe after a swim or walk. There are lots of berths for boats too which encourages people to visit. For me the island comes into its own after the day-trippers return. You can walk and find a place to swim or just sit and contemplate. There are a few easy access swimming spots or if you take some swim feet you can pretty much go in wherever you want. They can hire out SUPs, canoes and kayaks. If you want to canoe around the island it'll take you a couple of hours. STF Hotel: We stayed in the hotel section of the STF. Very clean but basic. Quite pricey for what it was I must say. We stayed in room 50 on the first night. The staff have a quarters over the room and they come back at about midnight / 1am after their shift and are up again early in the morning. It's an old building so the floorboards creak so much that you're woken up. I must say that the person on the front desk was superb. She listened and took our concerns on board so for the rest of our stay we moved to room 57 which was much quieter. Breakfast: Lots of people as there's lots of seating. If you're worried about covid then i recommend you get there early. There is hand sanitiser but with a buffet it's difficult to avoid touching the same surfaces and utensils. The food, juice and selection was OK but nothing special. Lunch / Dinner: There's nowhere else to eat on the island as it's so small. They seem to offer a buffet for lunch every day which is a bit bland for our tastes as I guess they have to cater to the masses. The a la carte dinner was good. I had the kungfisk on both the occasions we ate there as it was so good. The service is a bit random. There's no one in charge so the servers who are all young get by but if you want something you have to go up and order it yourselves sometimes. It can get busy with the day trippers at lunch time of course. Overall, I would recommend visiting especially in the shoulder season when it's a bit quieter.