Apollo, Athens > Reviews (2)

Well I’ve decided to come back over to Ciao for a bit, and when I saw that they are encouraging Travel reviews I looked for the Hotel that I stayed in when I was in Athens in April and it is this 1, so here is my experience and thoughts about this Hotel.

We had always wanted to go to Athens and I was looking around January time for a little cheap getaway. The best deal I found was through Expedia and it was flights and this Hotel for 5 nights. I think it all came to about £490 for the 2 of us, so not bad! There was a few other Hotels recommended by Expedia but after cross referencing them on Trip Advisor I found that this 1 seemed to be the best out of the budget ones. We never really splash out a lot of money on accommodation. Basically as long as it has a bed and a private bathroom then we are happy. Obviously I would like a clean room, a tv is always a bonus and furniture is good, but I just need a Hotel as a base to rest and get clean basically.

Before I went to Athens I knew about the “bad” area of town which is Omonia Square. Checking on google Maps I see that this Hotel is around 0.7km from the main Square, but I heard that the neighbourhood although a bit run down seemed to be ok. I thought why not take a chance on this and go for it. After all you can read all the reviews from everyone else and they may be nit picking with certain issues whereas I need to be able to make my own mind up.

I believe the Room rates for this Hotel sit around the £40-£50 a night on average. Since we booked as a package then I think our rate worked out around £32 a night and this included Breakfast.

Ok now onto the Hotel.

This is situated in the Metaxourgio area of the town. Not really sure what relevance this is, but I guess it is just like any city which has it’s own areas. The streets around the Hotel and outside of the door weren’t the nicest looking and the whole area looked a bit run down. Lots of graffiti everywhere and it just looked pretty grubby all around. This Hotel is situated good in regards to getting about town. This is about a 2 minute walk from the Subway and this is 4 stops away from the Acropolis. Takes about 8 minutes to make this journey which is over the other side of town. Across the road from the Hotel is a little café which we used the first night we got here and diagonally across the road from the Hotel and down a little side street is a Spar shop which we used to get all the bits and pieces in for to eat in the Hotel. IF you come out the Hotel and turn to your left and then basically walk straight ahead and up the little Hilly bit then you will get to Omonia Square. Up the square this is the main shopping area of town and there is lots of stalls up here as well. They sell lots of counterfeit goods and I got a “genuine” Gucci purse for 3 euro – bargain!! You get the chain restaurants up here eg McDonalds and that. We were advised by the staff in the Hotel not to go up here at night time and this seems to be the recommendation on the Internet as well.

Stories of Robbery, Prostitution and that are common and quite believable. Anyway I will review Athens at another time and this is all about the Hotel but I was wanting to point out the good location of this Hotel.

The Hotel stands 7 floors high but the 7th floor is the rooftop bar which was closed when we were there. I asked for a room with a view of the Acropolis and we probably got the best room in the place. We looked right out to it, and had a little balcony on the front so we could sit and look over. Lovely.

This Hotel is situated on a very busy street and I don’t believe the traffic stopped for 1 minute when we were there. Although we had a door for the balcony, and another door behind it we could still always hear the traffic through all that glass. The Air Con unit in the room was a good help as it was quite clammy when we were there and the highest temperature was 22 degrees, so this chilled the room just nice.

Amenities in the room was a television which had a good enough selection of channels in different languages, a mini fridge but it didn’t have food and drink in it, think it was just there for you to put your things in. There was 1 chair, so if eating our Tea inside then 1 of us sat on the chair, the other on the bed. There was the usual drawers and furniture. Towels and bedding were changed daily. This didn’t have a bath but the Shower cubicle was large and good shower. No shelves in the bathroom which I thought a bit odd, and there was only a tiny bit to store your toiletries. So we tended to leave them on top of the dressing table in the bedroom.

The whole Hotel has got tiles on the floor, so perhaps good to keep the heat out, but you heard every little chair scrape and banging about from other rooms. The Hotel seemed to echo with the noise as well. Quite a few of our neighbours in the Hotel were noisy but since the sound travelled then you couldn’t say for sure where the noise was coming from.

There is a tiny little lift which holds 3 averagely built people I would say. To look at the lift it looked a bit of a deathtrap as there wasn’t really an inside door on it, so when you were passing floors all you saw was tiles and most of the tiles were chipped.

The breakfast here was alright, but nothing all that special. There was boiled Eggs, Ham, Cheese, 1 type of Cereal, Bread and Rolls. Then again due to the price of staying here I wouldn’t have expected all that much fancy foods anyway.

The staff were nice enough. There was a girl with blonde hair who I would say worked really good. She was friendly, gave us a map and advised us of do’s and don’t and explained lots of things to us and when our travel adapter broke she advised she would pick 1 up for us in the morning and bring it to work. She didn’t want any money for it and just asked that we could return it to the front desk as they have a little stock of different travel plugs for guests. That I thought was nice of them. We saw a few other staff working there and they all had a “hello” to say to us, but the girl stood out as just being so nice.

We went to leave her a tip at the end of the stay but she was off for a few days when we were leaving.

Downstairs near the reception area there is a little sitting room area and you could lounge about on the couches and watch the TV. There is a huge Massage Chair there and you are free to use this free of charge. We used it a few times and it was great. It had all these setting on it and really worked your muscles for you.

This has a little bar which serves a little mixture of Bottled Beers, Spirits and Juices. I decided to be all “when in Athens” and all that and I decided to try Ouzo for the first time. All I can is that I didn’t like it, but at least I have tried it. Prices weren’t too bad for drinks. Quite average I would say.

So how would I summerise this Hotel? Ok, the area which this is situated is very convenient for little eating places, a shop, the Subway and the main Shopping area. The Hotel is cheap and perhaps Basic, but I feel that the money that you pay to stay here is great. The area is run down, but we didn’t get any hassle from anyone outside and there wasn’t any trouble that we saw. I could and would stay here again, but I wished that there wasn’t so much echo from the noises inside as it often made for a bit of a restless night’s sleep.

If you are looking for accomodation that is cheap, does the job and in a good location then I would recommend this Hotel.