DANAOS BEACH APARTMENTS

This is small mid range apartment hotel with 27 rooms, set over two blocks. Rooms are a good size with balconies. Twin beds, sofa, kitchenette with; fridge, kettle, single ring, microwave, crockery, cutlery, pots and pans enough for simple meals. I think there are some larger family rooms. Rooms have tables and chairs inside and on the balcony. Rooms have curtains and blackout curtains. Bathrooms are simple, but adequate; basin, WC and shower. The basin plug release in one room needed operating from below the sink, it was missing parts, on the second room the sink emptied with the plug in place. Plenty of hot water which never ran out and good shower pressure. Initial soap and shampoo provided. The kitchenette even came with enough coffee, sugar and milk for the first cup of coffee, nice touch. Kitchen sink area comes with tea towel, scourer and washing up liquid, again nice touch. Rooms are serviced daily and linen and towels changed regularly. Towels are not exactly soft and beds are somewhat firm! The hotel provides breakfast for an extra €8, we provided our own, but it looked good. The hotel has its own bar, providing snacks and drinks, pool drinks must be purchased from the bar. There are a few restaurants within walking distance and we used the pizza restaurant next door on arrival and on several further occasions and found it very good and not expensive, large portions! On a Saturday night they have very good live Greek music. There is a good supermarket close by which is well stocked. The very nice new hotel next door is lively and plays nice music in the evening, nothing too loud. Ideally you need a car to explore the area, there is a bus service to Rethimo, we had a car so didn’t use it. Given the distance from either Heraklion and Chaina airports a hire car for a couple of weeks might be less than the taxi rides to and from the airport. Our, not very good, hire car cost €160 for two weeks, booked from the UK (Carjet) well in advance. Flat screen TV with some English channels. Good room safe, extra €2 per day. Air conditioning in every room, but an additional €6 per day. There is a local climate tax of €3 per day in common with all other payments these seem to have to be in cash apparently their credit card machine is permanently broken! Limited car parking on site, which is covered and therefore protects your car from the worst of the sun’s heat, plenty of on street parking in the road. WiFi is poor, some connectivity in some rooms, around the pool and bar it was better, but never good. During our stay the guest were mainly Russian speakers from; Baltic Republics, Belarus and Romanians. Many English speakers, but no British guests that I detected during our stay. We stayed for two weeks but a lot of guests seem to be staying for a week. Nice well kept gardens with sun loungers, umbrellas, seating areas and a BBQ area. This good for families or groups to use, seating with tables and children playing in the garden. Smallish pool well kept, with children area, with sun beds and umbrellas, a deck area between the pool and the beach, with more sun-beds and umbrellas. It is a nice sandy beach, but the entry point has stones and shelves sharply initially, there is a sand bar 50m out. I strongly advise the use of beach shoes to get in and out of the water. There are rocks some 50m to the west, these provide a nice snorkelling spot and have a narrow sandy entry point into the water, good for fin users. Overall these are older buildings that has been very well kept and maintained. Cleaning is very good throughout the hotel and gardens. We changed rooms after two days and for an extra €10 per day had a room facing the sea and pool. We thought this hotel represented very good value for money. We paid a little over £500 for our two weeks in September, plus the extras we paid locally. We only found this hotel through one UK agency, Love holidays. We attempted to contact the hotel directly to secure a better room, but they didn’t respond to; our emails, their contact page on their website nor phone calls made by people we know who live in Crete. The problem seems to be that the manager/owner, speaks little English. We met other people who encountered a similar problem, including one couple who had used the hotel on numerous previous occasions. Highly recommended, would stay here again. Good inexpensive accommodation with all the facilities you could want.

We stayed at the hotel for a week, the hotel itself is in a quiet location with excellent access to the beach. On the first night, we were robbed while we were sleeping, the thief entered through the balcony door and managed to grab a backpack with important things for us and cash. The balcony was open because it was very hot in the room, we wanted to save on air conditioning. Of course, we informed the owners and the police in the morning. And of course the host said that it was our own fault that we slept with the balcony open, we should have taken the air conditioner. In general, it did not spoil our impression of the island, but we did not like the attitude of the owners. I warn other travelers to be vigilant and choose closed hotel areas.

Myself and my partner were booked into this hotel for a week, the lovely location is the only plus as it is right on the beach, however not a lot to do in the area, you will need to hire a car. After a few days our air con stopped working (aircon system was extremely old). The heat in the room was unbearable to the point of making me ill. When I addressed this with the owners of the hotel they said that we were lying and the aircon was working and we should not have a blanket on the bed!! The said blanket was a light cover and this had been fine when the aircon was working!!! I did not expect the owners to get defensive and accuse us of being the problem when the aircon was clearly broken. Myself and my partner left the hotel and went to another hotel as we value our health and were also concerned that there could have been an air coolant leak from the faulty aircon! No apology was given by the hotel owners, no offer of sourcing us another room , it was shocking!! Please beware of this hotel and find a hotel where your health is not put at risk!!

Good place if you want place for rest at night and at day to go to explore Crete islands. Hotel rooms need little restoration. The owners always happy and great you whit a smile. Breakfast tasty. Good place next to good restaurant. Next to the sea , beach is clean.

I genuinely have no idea how this hotel has so many positive reviews. We arrived and met the owners, who were very friendly, and showed us to our room. The room was presented well and was tidy, however incredibly dated. We unpacked and noticed the first issue. The beds are rock solid. I understand that it is a cheap hotel, but believe me when I say that they are the hardest mattresses I have ever slept on. At the end of my holiday I was so excited to get home into an actual bed. As well as this, there is air conditioning in the room, however it was quite expensive, but the rooms do get incredibly warm, so if you do choose to stay here, buy a mattress topper from a store nearby and a plug in desk fan. Another one of my main issues was the Wifi. There practically isn't any. On arrival we were given the Wifi password and were told “if you’re in the room use your phone data because the Wifi isn’t strong”. In this case, I really do not believe that you should be able to advertise the rooms as having Wifi. Me and my partner used a combined total of 80GB of our own mobile data because the Wifi literally does not reach the rooms. However, somehow, it reaches the top of the road and the bottom of the beach. There is a TV in the room, but unless you can speak Greek, you’re going to need to make sure you have plenty of roaming data. The room was “tidied” once per day. I put quotations as the housekeeping did come to the room every day, empty the bins, and folded the towels and the sheets. Folded, not replaced. The bedsheets were the exact same bedsheets from the first day we arrived. I only realised this as I dropped a bit of food on my sheet on the second day in the hotel, and it was there for the entire two weeks that I was. I believe it was flipped over once, but that’s all. In a horrible, warm, sweaty room, most people would prefer a clean bedsheet every couple days at least. The towels were changed a couple of times. There was also a lot of dirt under the bed. A lot of, what looked like, dead skin. A lot of it. The nearby area is incredibly noisy. There is a goat outside the hotel that screams from 6am, which sets off all of the dogs in the area. So unless you want to be woken up every morning by three barking dogs and a goat, I’d give it a miss. The kitchen was very basic, but it is fine if you want to eat pasta and sauce. It is to be expected being so close to the ocean, but the amount of mosquitoes that get into the room is absolutely ridiculous. You can constantly hear nearby rooms moving furniture around then hitting their walls and ceilings, and you will be doing the exact same. We had several citronella candles and bug spray and that didn’t even make a dent. Towards the last few days of our trip, I was genuinely looking at other hotels in the area, and if it wasn’t for my airport transfer being booked for that hotel, I would have very happily switched hotel. Never used the pool or the bar, as the room turned me away from that. The view from the balcony was very nice however, but nowhere near enough to justify the room.