Rodos Palladium, Kallithea

The Rodos Palladium, situated in Kalithea is a fantastic place to stay and is the perfect hotel for couples and families with teenagers. I stayed here with my family for one week in late July 2011 and we enjoyed it immensely.

Service & staff –
The service at the palladium is faultless and the staff are superb. Porters who are extremely pleasant are ready to take your bags off you and ferry them up to your rooms immediately on entry - which, after a long exhausting flight, is a nice and convenient surprise. The reception staff are very efficient and helpful; making check in's a dream and making queries disappear quickly. In the restaurant, you were seated immediately without a fuss and orders of drinks were taken before you could even comment on how great and speedy the service was. As well as this, the restaurant staff were some of the friendliest people I have ever met; they will always greet you with a smile and their cheery personalities are like a breath of fresh air. You would always receive a lively "hello" from the maids as you passed them in the corridor, who are such courteous, kind and considerate women.

Food –
Due to the fact that we went half board on our holiday, we ate at the Symposium restaurant for breakfast and dinner every day. Breakfast is a buffet service with a great variety and brilliant quality of food. With cereals, cold canapés & meats, breads, typical hot food and pastries, everyone is catered for and you are guaranteed to have a delicious, hearty breakfast each morning. Dinner is a combination of a set menu and a buffet service. You are offered the soup of the day, a main course (of which you have three to choose from) and then the buffet, alternatively you can opt to not have the soup or main course and just have the buffet, which is what we did every night. If you have a sophisticated pallet and like to eat adventurous things then the buffet holds plenty of variety for you, however if you aren't a sophisticated eater then there isn't that much to choose from (apart from the spaghetti, potatoes and bread that are available every night). The deserts were heavenly, the only downside to them was that none of them were labelled, so you didn't really know what you were eating - making it come as a real shock when you ate something that you disliked the taste of. To summarise, breakfast was fabulous and dinner was of great quality but poor variety, but on the whole the food was still delicious.

Rooms & Cleanliness –
We had booked two twin rooms with a sea view for our holiday, which were lovely but there were a few aspects that were an inconvenience to us. The decor looked great and had obviously had a lot of thought, time and care put into it. The beds were not that luxurious and were rather hard, but nevertheless we still managed to drift off straight away each night (wether that was because we were up so late or the bed actually being comfy, I’m not sure). Storage space was never a problem as there were plenty of cupboards, wardrobes and chests of drawers to put your belongings in. Each room (I can’t be sure of this but I would assume that it is the same for each room) is equipped with a TV, a safe, a kettle, a fridge and a telephone which were extremely handy. The bathrooms were wonderful and clean, complete with a bath, a shower and complementary cosmetics. The hairdryers were a real concern as they were diabolical. The handle got severely hot and had to be held with a towel around it in order to use without burning your hands, even though the air that came out of the hairdryer wasn't that high in temperature, making it take an extensive amount of time to dry your hair. Not only was the hairdryer of poor quality, as well as this it was located in the bathroom which is very inconvenient if you like to stick to a routine where one guest dries their hair whilst the other is showering. The maids cleaned the rooms daily to such a high standard, replacing our towels every day and being extremely courteous through the fact that when we tried to pull the beds apart so that we could sleep on separate beds, the maids made themselves aware of this and separated them for us. The whole of the hotel along with the rooms were always spotlessly clean, thanks to the sterling jobs done by the maids, the pool crew and the bar staff.

Facilities –
The pool at the Rodos palladium is simply heavenly. There will always be shaded sections due to the bridges and tunnels and there will always be a space for you to swim or play games in this mammoth lagoon style swimming pool - it will not disappoint. You can work up one hell of a sweat in the high tech gym, equipped with the best training machines, weight lifting equipment and muscle toning equipment. As for the spa, I didn't visit it myself, but from other people’s recommendations and opinions I would assume that it is very good.

Location –
Much as the Rodos palladium is described to be on the outskirts and quite far away from most things, this actually isn't the case. It is a short walk to a small selection of restaurants and shops, including a garra rufa fish spa, some clothes shops, an organic product shop, souvenir stores and a supermarket that is cheaper than the hotel shop. There are buses that stop outside the hotel every 20 minutes that allow you to get into Rodos town and Kallithea, we got on a bus to Rodos town one day, however the buses were very hectic due to the taxi strike that had been taking place while we staying in Rhodes. The palladium is located directly on the sandy and shale beach with plenty of sun beds available, just like the pool area. The shale parts of the beach are really hard to walk on and it is easy to fall over and hurt yourself, so if you are travelling with elderly people then I would suggest that they don't go walking on the beach alone.

Entertainment –
I have to say, the entertainment was rather disappointing. The shows that were on each night were boring, uninteresting and quite poor in quality. For example, their version of "Latin night" was playing music tracks that weren't even proper Latin music with no dancers or anything! Instead of watching the entertainment each night, we found it more exciting to go up to our room and play card games - the entertainment let the palladium down and did not match up to the 5 star standard of the rest of the hotel. The one night that we sat in the Mythos bar was the night that the pianist, Mythos, was playing the piano for the entertainment, and I have to say he was a spectacular pianist. His fingers just seemed to know where to go without him even directing them to the keys. Some of his versions of well-known songs were not to our liking, but undoubtedly he was one of the better nights of entertainment put on at the hotel.

Overall, the Rodos palladium is a fabulous hotel with amazing facilities, wonderful staff and excellent service. This luxurious resort certainly lives up to and deserves its 5 star rating. This holiday that I spent at the palladium was the best holiday I had ever been on. I highly recommend the Rodos palladium for people who are looking for a relaxing, enjoyable and memorable holiday.

Tip: bring your own hairdryer