Elea apartments

Bad experience with the owner who while there was an agreement that after the house was not used will be returned the amount did not keep his word.We never received keys.The house was not ready.We were advertised another apartment.

What presents as an idyllic location isn't that at all. Not unless you wish to be ruled and directed by the this disinterested and self-serving establishment. We had booked for eight (8) nights and stayed only one (1) preferring to go elsewhere so as to enjoy ourselves rather than stay there with uncaring and barbarous people. The short version. They don't provide second keys, so you have to lock yourself out or lock your family in if you're doing anything independently and they have the most un-family friendly policy when it comes to kids in the pool under the guise of safety. Our 4.5 year old has been taking swimming lessons and we wanted to use our vacation to help embed and improve what he's been learning. Yet we were forbidden to allow him into the pool without floaties even when under direct instruction and supervision by us, his parents, being in the water with him. Plus terrible air-con and really horrible showers if you're not a small build. The sugar on top, They, Did. Not. Care. One. Iota. And. Kept. A. Stupid. Conceited. Smile. Plastered. To. Their. Face. When. Told. We. Were. Leaving. After. One. NIght. Due. To. Their. Complete. Lack. Of. Civility. Consideration. And. Filotimo. Go anywhere else but here. The long version. Upon arrival I had to wait a few minutes as the person manning the pool bar, which also functioned as their reception spot, couldn't assist me further so I asked if there was a toilet I could use while I waited. I was directed to a nearby spot and headed over. The toilet was awful. Not only was it difficult to get into but it had no internal light that was working and when you closed the door behind you so were literally thrown into pitch black darkness. Choices were to leave the door ajar or turn on my phone's light to see. When I returned I was coolly and nonchalantly greeted with one of the first things I was told was that, as we have a child, we'll need to sign a form indicating we're going to abide by their pool regulations. I raised an eye-brow, as nowhere in the booking process did they indicate any further terms and conditions needed to be agreed to, but as it was 2pm in the heat of the summer I thought I'd deal with that later as I had my family in the car waiting for me to make sure everything was as we expected it to be. I was then handed a key to which I responded by asking for a second key so that my wife and I could come and go as we needed. The reply was a hard "No, we don't provide second keys. There's only one." I've been traveling the world for decades. There's always a second key. Dissatisfied but told by the young lady that I'd have to take it up with her boss/manager I paid the government tax in full and made for our car to start moving our bags in. I thought I'd at least check to see if we could manage with one key. See that lovely photo of the property with the pool and that tiled footpath? Well that path isn't very friendly when lugging larger suitcases. Still, I've dealt with much worse and it was a minor inconvenience compared to everything else. The room was another story. Sure, it's 2-star, but in Greece the typical baseline is that you'll at least get a decent air-con unit to help you cool down and their unit was almost useless. Not only that but it was placed in the bedroom and with a long corridor to the front kitchen and living space where the sofa bed was, our little one had literally no benefit from it being on during the night and sweated right through all his clothes. And it was almost pointless having it on during the day unless you were actually in the bedroom to derive a benefit. Also, if you're a larger or taller person, the shower is almost unusable because if you dropped your soap, good luck reaching down in the space provided to retrieve it. You had to stop the water, open the shower and use the opening to bend over and retrieve it. As I was still settling in my wife took our son down for a swim to cool him down and was again confronted by staff demanding she sign an agreement in using the pool with our son. She said she'd get to it after speaking with me but when she attempted to have our son practice his swimming lessons with her in the pool they point blank refused to let him into it without putting his floaties on. My wife is a lovely soft-spoken lady and was in shock. She tried to reason with them by explaining this wasn't independent play but a lesson that she'd be directly supervising, and that he'd absolutely have his floaties on after that, but they refused to listen. She was quite distressed by the time I met her poolside while playing it done as she was concerned about there being a scene. So I only found out the full extent of the story later. Meanwhile, before I went down the pool, I inspected the lock mechanism of the door and whether it was possible to lock and open it from the inside without the key. It wasn't. The key went into metal sliding door blackout shutters that could only be locked or opened with the key. The choice was then, if I wanted to step out later at night as I have friends and family in Hania, or if I wanted to do some work on my pad without keeping my family up, I had to either leave the premises unlocked or to lock them in and hope there wasn't an emergency. No, they don't have 24/7 reception onsite to mitigate that either. And to think they emphasise "safety" as the bedrock of their decision-making... Oh, and if you think that pool bar looks like a great place to hang in the cool of the evening and night, it closes by 7pm, and there's a very limited food menu. The next morning the pathway was clear, either they provided a second key or we were leaving. The smug, self-assured and conceited excuse for a general manager/hotelier that greeted me with his painted on smile couldn't have been more disinterested. I told him why we were leaving and we left. It was the best decision ever! Please check out Agrimia at Platanias and Eden Beach Hotel in Agia Marina. That's what Cretan hospitality is really like.

Me and my husband stayed for 10nights, I couldn't fault the place, we stayed on the first floor 1 bedroom apartment very clean and spacious, plenty of sunbeds around the pool, decent size pool, walking distance to restaurants and supermarkets, beaches just down the road. The only thing that annoyed me was the barking dog next door, it barked all hours and was really loud, enough to disturb your sleep.