Sirius Hotel

It's an impressive-looking place, but it's been badly run down. I was lucky that the air conditioner in my room worked. I only got hot water in the shower after Neckermann's representative apparently had to use some magic words with the hotel management. The beach is a poor joke, dusty and narrow. Most of the staff are friendly, but that's about it. The restaurant is a great way to lose weight on holiday.

From the lobby and the area around it, the hotel looked decent at first. Then we got to our room. There was a hole by the front door handle, like someone had tried to tear it off. The carpet was stained all over, except in the shower and toilet, with marks that might have been wine or something else. We only had a light throw for one person and a bedspread, despite there being two of us. When we asked for a blanket, they brought another throw. The shower door looked damaged and was hard to close without forcing it. There was a film on the floor, so I only showered in slippers. The toilet was dirty inside; I scrubbed it with the toilet brush, without any detergent, and it got cleaner, which made it seem like nobody had cleaned it. There was a huge hole in the cabinet wall in the mirrored desk. Under the bed, we found a cigarette butt and other rubbish. Our room was standard, but that shouldn't mean filth and disrepair. A cleaner came daily to empty the bin and make the bed, and sometimes arranged our things neatly. That was all we noticed. The coffee machines in the lobby were supposedly out of order. The working machine dispensed something that wasn't really coffee, and choosing “Coffee” gave you brownish water. The food was okay but repetitive. Fruit was mostly oranges, apples, watermelon, and tasteless cantaloupe. Sometimes they served waffles or flatbreads after lunch. The staff were friendly, but that didn't make up for the problems. Wi-Fi was free in the lobby, but cost $2 per device per day in the room and around the grounds. It kept cutting out, and the receptionist just shrugged and offered a refund. For the last couple of days, the room phone rang at 4 AM. After it happened a second time, I told reception. The receptionist apologized and said someone would check. Later a man came in and simply unplugged the phone. There was a German Shepherd chained up on the hotel grounds. She seemed to have mastitis and fleas, and I felt awful for her. I don't know why she was there in that condition or what care she was getting. We did see someone let her out for a walk. The pool was very cold. The bar stayed open until 10:30 PM and served wine, beer, gin, vodka, Fanta, and Pepsi. At least the hotel is very close to the sea, which was convenient. We wouldn't return, and four stars is generous.

We stayed from June 16th to June 27th and arrived at 5:30 AM. Aysha at reception looked sleepy, having just woken up, but they put bracelets on us and sent us to breakfast. It stayed the same every day. Like the other guests who arrived that morning, we weren't given a room after eating and had to wait until 2:00 PM. That left us half a day in the lobby, where the coffee machine was nearly useless. It might work once a week, if it didn't start smoking. The lobby restroom looked like a utility room, though the one by the pool was in better shape. The reception area had missing lampshades, and the bulbs never worked during our stay. The chair rails were black. The rooms were fine, but the lobby is the first thing guests see. Wi-Fi there was mediocre, and internet in the rooms was paid. Aysha eventually asked whether we wanted one bed or two, and we chose a king-size. Twenty minutes later, we got room 115. It was shocking: full of smoke, with such a bad smell that we had to sleep with the balcony door open. The handle had been torn off. It turned out many people slept with their balcony doors open, apparently because their air conditioning was faulty or not working properly. Our AC sounded like a helicopter taking off. The lampshades beside the bed and above the mirror were missing, and another lamp only worked every other day. The carpet had lots of coffee stains and other unknown marks. The sink was cracked, and using the shower meant trying to find the right setting. Water came out of strange holes in the shower head, from above or below; once it was off, the water was either hot or cold, and the pressure was very weak. The mountain view was the only good thing about the room. The beach was decent, with small pebbles at the entrance. Bring coral shoes for any hotel with a rocky shoreline. The loungers were okay, with canopies covering four beds that could be shifted for shade, but there were no umbrellas or mattresses. Towels required a $10 deposit per person and were changed every three days, so most guests, us included, brought their own. The pool was usually quiet during the day and at lunch, perhaps because there was so little entertainment. It only started in the last few days, and even then it was hard to call it entertainment: yoga, aqua gymnastics, and a mini-disco, all within an hour. The slide came on around 11 a.m. for maybe 20 minutes. Around then they served pancakes with potatoes and salted cheese, with spinach one day. I think waffles were served at 5 p.m. and ice cream at 6. The food was almost identical every day, with especially little breakfast variety. There were boiled and fried eggs and bread dipped in egg, plus buckwheat, beans in tomato paste, and rice three times a day. Lunch was usually chicken legs, sometimes nuggets, fish, or turkey cutlets, depending on the meat from dinner the night before. A lot of food seemed to get a second, third, or even fourth life. Pea soup was served for four days, then milk soup, apparently made with the milk from breakfast bottles that had gone sour before snack time. Dinner might be whole fish, turkey, or chicken, with leftovers showing up at lunch the next day. Watermelon was the main fruit; oranges and cantaloupe appeared for two days. Previous guests warned us that the elevator could get stuck late at night, so you'd have to knock to get out. Most guests were Russian. The hotel seems to depend on them; we didn't see a single foreigner during our stay.