WHERE IS THIS PLACE?

Camari Gardens hotel apartments are situated in Gerani, near Rethymnon in Crete.
This is a smallish family run resort with just 65 apartments and studios with 2 pools, a small playground, restaurant, reception/meeting area with book exchange library and a few electronic games and computers, a laundry, a small supermarket set in pleasant gardens overlooking the sea.

http://www.camarigarden.com/main.aspx?lan_id=English&page_id=Home

OUR STORY:

We booked this 2 week holiday through Thomas Cook holidays but prior to booking I read a lot of reviews on Tripadvisor. There were no really unfavourable comments about this resort and the vast majority were really positive so I chose this place on that basis. The holiday was a package including flights from East Midlands and transfers from Heraklion to the resort.

In this review I will only concentrate on the resort rather than the Thomas Cook/ Airtours package (that is another story altogether).

THE ARRIVAL

We arrived at about 5am at the resort and were quickly shown to our apartments. I had asked for ground floor and adjacent apartments away from noisy areas and that is exactly what we got. We were away from the pools and restaurant area but had a balcony shared by the two apartments on the front side and another outside area at the back too. This meant we could move the outside furniture from one area to the other depending on where the shade was if we wanted to keep the little ones out of the sun.

We quickly discovered that the aircon worked with a remote which you had to pay 5 Euros per day to use. We did complain that we were not warned that aircon was extra and so they charged us 5 Euros per day for the 2 apartments rather than 10 as it would have been which was better but still an added extra.

We also found out through reviews on trip advisor that there is a welcome pack put into all apartments which sounds lovely until you find you have to pay 15 Euros as you leave. Someone had priced the things and said it came to 7 Euros in the little supermarket on site. So pre-warned I instructed my daughter not to use the pack and informed them at reception that we did NOT want either pack, thank you. They were fine about it and just said the cleaner would remove the items.

Baby cots are also charged for extra and there was one in my daughter’s apartment when they arrived so we did tell them we did not need this either when we read this piece of information on a cupboard in one room. They said’ no problem’ and came to collect it at about 10.30 the next night! The children were asleep and we were babysitting so we had to creep in and remove this from their room without waking them. I’m not sure if they were just checking that we were really not using it or it was just the fact that a family with a baby had requested one.

OUR APARTMENTS:

We had 2 one bedroom apartments and they were virtually identical.
The bedroom had two single beds with hardish foam mattresses and only one pillow on each (we were able to grab the two pillows from the beds in the main room as we were not using these. There was a bedside table in between and a dressing table/shelf with a couple of small drawers below a mirror. There was a decent sized wardrobe with hangers and you could put your suitcase above this or underneath it for storage. There was no safe in the room but the windows and doors had obviously been recently upgraded and were like UPVC and pretty secure so we did not worry too much.

We had the same cleaner every day and she was lovely. The apartments were cleaned EVERY day except Sunday and linen changed at least twice a week.
The main room was a large open plan area with two single beds against the wall on one side. The kitchen area backed on to the bathroom and the eating area was near the kitchen. It had marble floors throughout, curtains at all the windows which were clean and co-ordinated with the bed covers.

The kitchen was very basic. It had a sink and an electric table top cooker with a large ring and a very small one. The kettle only stayed on for a few minutes and then turned itself off so you had to stand and hold it down until it boiled – the other apartment didn’t have one at all. The fridge was small and adequate but the freezer really only suitable for making ice not storing food – my ice lollies that I bought for the boys melted in there so I had to throw them out!!

I would not really have liked to try and cook too much on here. We did do pasta one night – pasta on our cooker and sauce in the other apartment. We also discovered that you can do toast on a solid electric ring, it was slow but did the trick!
Most of the time we ate salads or ate out so it wasn’t really a major problem but something to be aware of.

The bathroom was a wet room with a shower curtain round a slightly recessed area. It was IMPOSSIBLE to have a shower and not get the room soaked which could be a bit lethal on the marble floor. The toilet plumbing apparently could NOT cope with toilet paper so we had the yukky bucket beside the toilet which appears to be a Turkish and Greek problem as I have not experienced this anywhere else in the world and it is a bit yuk as far as i am concerned. I just feel really sorry for the cleaners.

The towels were quite basic, white and a bit thin but there were plenty of them and they were changed frequently. There was a drying rack on the balcony which was very handy for washing and for towels and swimsuit drying too.

The balcony was a large one for both apartments with plenty of clean plastic seating and tables. Nothing fancy but were ideal for eating outside. The furniture was light enough to move from the front to the back of the apartments to avoid the sun if needed.

THE REST OF THE RESORT:

Pools :
There were two nice Pools and both of them had small children’s pool beside them. There were plenty of sunloungers and there was no charge for using them either. One pool nearest the reception area and the restaurant also had tables and chairs so you could get a drink or food from the bar/restaurant and enjoy it

beside the pool. There were several lilos and blow up toys that were used by everyone. People seemed very good at sharing and I think a lot of people left them when they went home so the children and adults had plenty of things to float around on in the pool.

Internet :
There was free wi fi in the area near the Reception which I thought was excellent in a resort of this size.

Restaurant:
The food was typical Greek food, well cooked and very tasty and was also quite reasonable but I did find it a bit cheeky that 60cents cover charge per person was added to the bill each time which added up over a few meals with our family of 6 including the two grandsons. We only ate there on a few occasions but enjoyed the dolmades, Greek salad, spinach and cheese pastries and cooked cheese amongst other things. Beer was 2 Euros but fruit juice was 3 Euros which was okay for beer drinkers but expensive for the juice I thought. Beer was 1 Euro in the supermarket for the same sized large bottle.

On Sunday nights they organised a Greek evening around the restaurant and pool area which was nice but very late. It didn’t really get going until about 9pm and went on quite late. The first Sunday our daughter went out with her husband as it was their wedding anniversary so we babysat the grandchildren and I went down to the area a few times to have a look. On the second Sunday we thought about it but decided that sitting beside the pool for a meal would not be a great idea with the boys and it was quite a late night so we just took peeks at the dancing again. If we hadn’t had the youngsters we might have gone as it did look quite fun with a live Greek band and dancers as well as Greek food.

Other parts of the Resort included a small play area with plastic slide, and climbing thing which was just below the restaurant so we could enjoy a drink or meal and the boys went off to play while we waited for the food to come.

The supermarket sold the basics of bread, milk, spreads cleaning stuff and jars of jam and other bits. We were able to buy enough to keep us going for a couple of days, before we got our hire car, at reasonable prices too. It is owned by the same family as own the resort and naturally they point you in this direction for purchases. It also sold a bizarre array of strange glass and pottery souvenirs as well as swim toys and blow up things.

SUMMARY:

This was a lovely quiet resort suitable for families and couples wanting quiet rather than a lively all action place to stay. The facilities were clean and basic, the people friendly and helpful, the food was good but not exciting. I would certainly recommend it for a family holiday but not necessarily for families with teenagers as there was not much to do except swim and sunbathe on the actual resort.

Thanks for reading my effort and hopefully it will be of use to someone.

This review may be posted on other sites under my user name.

© Catsholiday