Eleni Palace

The ground-floor apartment was very clean and tidy, and the mini kitchen had everything we might need. There’s also a huge balcony, with lots of flowers that smell terrific in the evening. We stayed one night and found the accommodations and location pretty good. The staff were excellent.

We were meant to stay nine days, but managed only four. The breakfast was a low-quality disappointment, and the room itself was dirty and smelled bad. There were hairs on the pillow, in the bathroom cupboard, and in the freezer. The floor was dirty too, with sticky surfaces and fly excrement throughout the pantry kitchen. There were many flies, the kind you usually find where sanitary hygiene is poor, and the taps were crusted with limescale. The freezer compartment had no door, so it built up a block of ice and wasted energy. We had booked through a travel agency. Because it was late when we arrived, we raised the issues with the manager the next morning. He seemed skeptical and wanted to see them, so we showed him around. He said the room would be cleaned again. When we came back, some areas had only been cleaned superficially. For example, they had put an ice cube tray on top of the hair in the freezer. We soon decided we couldn’t stay. There were also quite a few mosquitoes, especially if your room is by the pool. The hotel can’t be held responsible for them, of course, but you’ll get a lot of bites.

The bar prices are lower than at nearby restaurants. You can get cold draft beer, snacks, fresh-squeezed orange juice, oven-baked pizza, and special ice cream glazed by Adonis, the owner. The hotel is about 150m from the beach and has a pool with clean water and a bar for windy days. The place is beautiful, clean, neat, and well maintained. Rooms are spacious and well placed, with air conditioning and a balcony in every one, though I wouldn’t recommend room 203: it sits right under the concrete arch and gets very hot at night. Cleaning is every other day, and sheets are changed twice a week. Breakfast is okay, with fruit from the garden, vegetables, butter, jams, orange juice, coffee and tea, baked cookies, and more in a Swedish buffet. A little more variety would be nice.

Our taxi dropped us at the wrong hotel, but when we got to Eleni Palace the staff welcomed us warmly. We were travelling with our two grown-up sons and had first been placed in a family room. The manager then said we needed a bigger room and upgraded us to a huge suite with an open balcony and amazing views. The staff are wonderful and can’t do enough for us.