We stayed 21st June to 2nd July and had some very rainy days.
On arrival at the hotel our check in seemed to be quite long. We were allocated a Junior Suite but changed to one of the Paradise rooms near the chill pool. These rooms are much smaller and not as plush but the location is perfect. Despite me accepting a downgrade, they still tried to upsell an ocean facing room, they were all partial ocean facing so this was an unnecessary upsell and annoyed me a little. On speaking to other people they were given rooms closer to the ocean with no extra charge.
The hotel grounds are amazing and it is pure paradise. We loved the smaller hotel and everything was wonderful.
Housekeeping was very efficient daily with no issues.
I loved the coffee shop in joes Merchants and the sandwiches and snacks were fabulous. It was a wonderful concept just going along and getting as many drinks and snacks as you like. Special thanks to Rosie, Eliz and Moises in Joes Merchants who served me multiple times daily.
We hardly used any points and bought some alcohol to bring home.
Each morning I attended Pilates on the jetty with Landy, I had 1-1 sessions as no one else turned up. Landy was wonderful and was able to adapt each session to my individual needs.
I also did painting and bracelet making ( to pass the time when it was raining) thanks to Tania and Angy and also for Alex in the entertainment team.
The activities were a bit hit and miss, it would be better if they had a set daily schedule for staples such as Aqua Aerobics, we would be told the class would be on then no one would turn up. This happened several times.
Restaurants
The beach house is a great setting. The chairs are very uncomfortable 🤣
The breakfast buffet isn’t vast and could do with a few more sweet pastry choices. Other than that it’s great, you can get breakfast alcohol drinks such as Mimosas. The staff are always accommodating. There is hardly ever a queue for eggs and if there is a queue it’s gone quite quick.
The lunch menu in beach house is great with the Thai fish cakes, wings and fish and chips some of my favourite meals.
The menu for the Beach house changed in the evening.
Rita’s Tacos is a great setting for lunch. Great food.
Franks and Lola’s and Latino were also really great food.
If I had one criticism about the restaurants it’s that it could do with another choice, such as Asian. When we were there occupancy was low so we had 3 visits each to Latino and Frank and Lola’s and it did become repetitive . Food was good though. Because of low occupancy there were only 2 restaurant choices most evenings alternating the restaurants.
You need to make reservations at the restaurants as they can be awkward if you turn up without a reservation and we saw them frequently turn people away at only 8.30pm and then there would be no more restaurant options to choose from.
Bars
The Compass Bar is small and hot and busy when it’s raining, perhaps they could do the entertainment in the reception area near the swinging beds when it’s raining as it seemed like such an underused space but it was much bigger.
Our favourite is the 5 O’clock bar but that closed at 11 and then we went inside to Compass which closed at 12.
The beach is pure paradise and yes it does have some seaweed but they try and keep it clean and move it daily. We managed to have dinner and BBQ lunch on the beach during our stay which was great.
The pools are lovely, the chill pool used to be the children’s pool in a former hotel so it’s very shallow.
The shop is ridiculously expensive and I’m sure if they lowered the prices they would sell some products. A T shirt or cap would set you back £50-£60, such a shame the prices were so high.
Thankyou to Carlos, Emilio and Antonio, Rafael some of the restaurant servers.
Also Jesus who is super in walking round checking in on everyone daily and making sure that everything is ok and making sure restaurant bookings have been made.
The hotel is a little disorganised and there is some room for improvement, however overall our stay was fabulous, also partly down to meeting some fabulous people too.
We would definitely return here it was a wonderful holiday.
Thank you to everyone who looked after us.
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