X5317TFrichardc
Google
I'd had my eye on this hotel for a couple of years and was really looking forward to going. It was well reviewed the pictures looked good and I've liked Istria when I've been before.||I'll start with the good stuff:|- Rooms are spacious. Nice balconies. Easily the comfiest bed I've ever had in a hotel.|- Generally quiet, no noise. Certainly can't hear the next rooms through the walls.|- There's a regular bus service (every 20 mins) just up the road that gets you to Pula in about 15 mins for 2 euros. Very reliable.|- Lovely, big indoor saltwater pool.|- Reception staff were generally helpful. Radomir in the restaurant was also nice.||The bad stuff:|- The rooms look great at first... but they're not great on closer inspection. The tap in my bathroom for example had blue rust all round the end (picture attached.) It clearly hadn't been cleaned properly and frankly just needed replacing - if it's got blue rust on it then it must have been there for quite some time! It's not nice to drink from or brush your teeth with. Likewise, the towel rail (the other picture attached) - the brown dots *all over it* are rust. It's not very nice to hang your towel on. Like the tap, you can see clearly within 5 seconds that it needs replacing, but they haven't bothered. Certainly not good enough for £1000+ per week.|- I spilt a little bit of water on the carpet one day, so I went to soak it up with some tissue. When I picked the tissue back up it had loads of long, black hairs on it! (My hair is blonde and short and no one else with long, black hair had been in my room.) Just not a clean carpet at all. Again, not good enough for £1000+.|- Foyer: I was in the Marina Wing. One day there was heavy rainfall. I walked into the foyer in the Marina Way and a big puddle of rainwater had come through a gap in the window/wall and was lying on the floor. It's just shabby.|- Air con: it was particularly hot one night, so I went to turn the air con on, but despite putting it on the cold setting and lowering the target temperature to 10oc, the air con was pumping out hot air! I couldn't get it to do anything else, so my room ended up even hotter.|- Restaurant: there is a big, impressive variety of food, but that variety becomes less important when all the food is really, really salty. I much prefer savoury to sweet, but this was too salty even for my tastes. Also, on a few occasions the food was cold - you could even put your hand on the edge of the trays of 'hot' food and feel that the trays were nothing more than lukewarm. I don't know if you've had cold baked beans or beef stew before but I promise it's not very nice! Again, clearly the devices to keep the food warm need replacing.|- Check out is at 10:00. I was getting picked up to go to the airport at 13:50. I asked if I could possibly use the indoor pool for a couple of hours after check out before I went home and I was told no... unless I gave them an additional payment! This is after spending over £1000 for a week there. I've genuinely never encountered a hotel that doesn't let you use the pool on the day you go home before. The pool was not busy, either - me having an hour swim before I went home made no difference (I know this because I looked in the window to the pool after check out and there was no one else in the pool!) I thought it was absolutely pathetic and incredibly greedy. It's also the last impression I had of the hotel. I don't blame the reception staff for this - its clearly a 'brilliant' idea from the hotel management.||The whole thing feels like it's designed for Instagram. You'll see pictures of it and it'll look great, but when you actually scratch the surface it's shabby. Anyone can see when a towel rail or tap is rusty, for example, but they've done nothing about it.||I'm not really writing this for the hotel's benefit. I don't honestly think they'll care if a Brit didn't enjoy his stay there. I know they'll get thousands of new guests there next summer, they know they'll get thousands of new guests there next summer. They'll make lots of money.||I'm writing this for anyone who was like me and thought this looked like a good place to have a holiday. My advice would be to stay in Porec or Fazana - there are nicer hotels there - or, frankly, just go to Italy instead (Croatia is just as expensive as Italy now they're in the Euro.) This place really isn't as good as it looks. It's all style and no substance and certainly not value for money.