The Chania Hotel Crete, Vignette Collection

“So nearly perfect”

Before I say anything else, let me say that my wife and I both loved this hotel, so much so that we are already planning to return next year. Having said that, our admiration is frustratingly flawed. On almost everything, this hotel gets ten out of ten. LOCATION : Right in the middle of town, on… more

Before I say anything else, let me say that my wife and I both loved this hotel, so much so that we are already planning to return next year. Having said that, our admiration is frustratingly flawed. On almost everything, this hotel gets ten out of ten. LOCATION : Right in the middle of town, on the main square, with the old town across the road and the main, pedestrianised street down to the Venetian Harbour just opposite, and all the sights within walking distance (depending on how far you are prepared to walk, of course). If you want to go further afield, the bus station is only a couple of hundred yards away. Of course, if you’re looking for a beach hotel, you have come to the wrong place. 10/10 FOOD : Absolutely superb, with a vast choice, perfectly cooked and beautifully presented and served. Our only niggle - and it is nit-picking, really - is that we have had better muesli at breakfast, but that is a matter of taste. We have not had better than any of the huge range of other things we tried, including perfect English breakfast ingredients and a large range of Greek dishes. Again, some might prefer their spanakopita with flaky pastry as seen on the mainland, but short pastry is the Cretan way. 10/10 FACILITIES : Everything you would expect, although the pool actually in the breakfast room was a bit of a surprise, and I can’t help wondering if it gets much use. 10/10 WI-FI : Fast, reliable, and free, as it should be. We had no trouble using it to watch UK TV with our VPN. 10/10 SERVICE : Quite literally, the very best we have ever encountered. Everyone, without exception, was amazingly friendly and helpful and went the extra mile to make us feel relaxed and happy. I would give them eleven or twelve out of ten if I could. 15/10 Now we come to the let down, and really it didn’t stop us from enjoying our holiday. ACCOMMODATION : Our room was spotless, comfortable, and had everything you would want. A mad designer had been let loose on the lights and bathroom fittings, but they worked although it took us the whole week to get the hang of the light switches. There were no noise issues, even though the Crete Marathon passed right outside our window one morning. We liked it very much once we had got used to it, but the initial problem was one of perception. It had been billed as a ‘de-luxe suite’. We have no problem with the de-luxe bit, but a suite it was not. A suite has a separate sitting room, which this lacked. It was a room, and not a particularly large room at that. True, it housed a kingsize bed, two bedside tables, a desk and chair, a table and two chairs for it, a 56” TV and a large sofa, but by the time it had done that it was verging on the cramped. Wardrobe and drawer space was rather mean, but that is a feature of almost all new hotels. This was also because the bathroom wasted so much space. It was almost the same size as the bedroom, but at least two-thirds of it was taken up with a large, free-standing whirlpool bath which we couldn’t use because there were no handrails and we are past the age when we can get in and out of baths without them. There was also a walk-in shower, two washbasins and a loo, so the bath could easily have been dispensed with and the space used to provide the sitting room which would have made the accommodation into a true suite. As it was, groping your way past the bath to get to the loo in the middle of the night was a real obstacle course, not helped by all the light switches being on the far wall, so that you had to get past the bath to put the light on. I don’t know whom thought it was a good idea to fix the shaving mirror on the wall at the right height for a hobbit. To quote Bernard Shaw, ‘those who like this sort of thing will find it the sort of thing they like’. We would have had no quibble if the room had been described as a de-luxe room or even a junior suite, but to call it a de-luxe suite left us feeling disappointed at first. To repeat, we loved our stay here and plan to do it again , but prospective guests in search of an actual suite need to know to avoid disappointment. 9/10

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