Hotel Residence Port Marine, Sète

...English), so we contacted the hotel by email, booked the room and paid a small deposit of around 30 Euros.

Location

On top of a hill just of the main road about 10 minutes walk down to the port.

Arrival

After a gruelling 8 hour drive down to the South of France we arrived at the port of Sete only to find that it was their annual water jousting tournament and traffic in the port was horrendous. ...
...point in front of the hotel was completely full of parked cars and as we were being followed by irate French drivers we followed signs for the hotel car park at the rear. This was not easy, every available space was filled with cars and ‘hubby’ had to manoeuvre his estate around all these obstacles, eventually coming to an underground car park. He left the car and headed to reception only to be greeted by the rudest female receptionist I had ever ... more

Residence Port Marine, Sete, sounds lovely doesn’t it? Read on……

Booking

We found the hotels website fairy easily and to be honest it looked great (the site did translate into English), so we contacted the hotel by email, booked the room and paid a small deposit of around 30 Euros.

Location

On top of a hill just of the main road about 10 minutes walk down to the port.

Arrival

After a gruelling 8 hour drive down to the South of France we arrived at the port of Sete only to find that it was their annual water jousting tournament and traffic in the port was horrendous. However, armed with our trusty sat nav we edged our way through the badly parked cars up the hill towards our hotel. We were so glad that we had taken the trouble to pre-book parking within the hotel.

We arrived at last, tired and a little ‘cranky’ only to find that the drop off point in front of the hotel was completely full of parked cars and as we were being followed by irate French drivers we followed signs for the hotel car park at the rear. This was not easy, every available space was filled with cars and ‘hubby’ had to manoeuvre his estate around all these obstacles, eventually coming to an underground car park. He left the car and headed to reception only to be greeted by the rudest female receptionist I had ever met, who insisted he brought the car back to the front and that she would ‘explain the parking’. How on earth he managed to reverse the Passat in between all those badly parked cars, I will never know. So we all empty out of the car which is stuck on the road and head to reception to be greeted by “your car is too big, you will have to park sideways” I really don’t know what she expected a family of three driving from the UK to arrive in! Eventually she directed angry hubby to the same garage that we had just been parked in front of. Not a good start.

First Impressions:

Needs a lick of paint, preferably not the same as the original pink colour!

Room

After negotiating the car park we were looking forward to our lateral sea view room. Well there was a sea view, if you stood on a chair, pressed your nose up to the window and looked left. The rest of the room was totally uninspiring; it looked like a 1970’s version of a Travelodge. Three single beds, TV, and table, at least there was air conditioning, which was needed as it was a stuffy room and you couldn’t open the window as the traffic noise was horrendous. There was a small fitted wardrobe, but we didn’t bother to unpack!

Bathroom

Basic but clean. Bath, shower, toilet and a few toiletries

To be honest, we were so tired and hungry we didn’t care too much and headed down to the bar for a cold beer.

Bar

Actually really nice, they had opened the double doors and a cool breeze was blowing through, it was nicely decorated and a pleasant place to sit for a while. The beer was cold and welcome and the lady who served us was charming and friendly, obviously not related to the receptionist.

Breakfast

This was served upstairs where you have the option of sitting out on the terrace, overlooking the harbour or eating inside. We were not impressed with the food, it had obviously been left out for sometime, the bread was stale and the meat seemed to be curling at the edge. The coffee was horrid and the juice tasted powdered. That was when we decided not to hang around, but to head for Spain.

Pool

I had to put this in, on the website it is described as a panoramic pool, granted if you stand up and turn around you can see the harbour. However, it must be very difficult to swim in something the size of a postage stamp. It’s tiny, we didn’t use it (preferring to run away) ‘Grumpy’ is 6 ft 2 ins and would have completely filled it.

Access

Good wheelchair access all around, the lifts were quite large and there was plenty of room around the dining area, reception and bar. I would point out that the hotel is near the top of a steep hill and the pavements down to the harbour are quite narrow and filled with menus from local restaurants so wheelchair users would struggle to get up and down to the port.

Overall

Not a good hotel! Ok it cost less than £100 for a triple room in the south of France, but it is still overpriced. I am sure there are better hotels in the area, we booked over the internet and I have to be honest its web page made it look better than it really was.
www.hotelportmarine.com

Thanks for reading X 

...less