Spa Hotel Kleptuza

The area is peaceful, though it's a little far from the center. We stayed with our four-month-old and enjoyed it. The rooms are large and have terraces, and the spa and mineral-water pools are great: two indoor pools, a jacuzzi, Turkish bath, sauna, relaxation room, gym, and an outdoor pool. I'd recommend it!

Hotel "Kleptuza" has spacious rooms, comfortable beds, and enough towels and bathrobes. The outdoor pool gets plenty of sun, and the hotel is close to the park of the same name, so the air is clean and it's quiet. There's a lot of potential here, but plenty of things have been missed. The place feels as if it was built, opened, and then simply used, with little thought given to repairs or preserving things. At the spa, staff sometimes turn the steam bath and sauna on and off, so you may have to wait for them to heat up before using them. Breakfast has a decent range to choose from, but it could be better. For a four-star hotel, I found it odd that they serve coffee from a Nescafe machine like the ones in small coffee and newspaper shops around the country, and tea from some of the lowest-quality brands. As someone who loves French toast, I was disappointed that it was oily and tasteless.

The pools were small, not very warm, and a little dirty, though they were a decent option in the cold winter. The hotel itself was nice and warm, and our double lux room was cozy. The staff were very polite. We'd been worried about breakfast after reading the comments, but it was good and had a great variety, including homemade banitsa and tikvenik. I'd come back, the region is wonderful.

We expected to relax and came away very disappointed. Every pool was small and dirty, with white bits and dead spiders in the water. The sauna was tiny and barely warm, and the heated loungers were cold. Worst of all, I cut my foot on an unsecured first step in the pool. The woman there knew about the problem and laughed at me.