rated the Sol Falco Hotel as follows:| Cleanliness |  | | Location |  | | Staff |  | | Food | | |
| Entertainment | |
| said: Picked up a hire care (Avis) from the airport... had to wait a very long time to be served ~15mins plus the 10mins it took to sort everything out. My advice, sort out the hire cars and then collect your luggage off the baggage carousel, then go to find your car! Overall cost (for two weeks) was 120 pounds, incl. two car seats.
Meals
Breakfast
Meal times: 08:00 – 10:00.
Example Menu: Cereal, tea / coffee, full English, continental, bread.
Opinion: To be fair what else would you need for a breakfast?
Lunch
Meal times: 13:00 – 14:30 (Note: This was not available until full-board guests arrived for our second week.)
Example Menu: sub-set of evening meal.
Evening Meal
Meal times: 19:00 – 22:00 (18:30 – 21:00 before full-board guests arrived).
Example Menu for lunch/evening: every day: fish, paella, chicken, chips, chicken nuggets, mixed veg., potatoes, pasta, vast salad bar, soup, and lovely desserts! Once-per-week: T-Bone steak, BBQ.
Opinion: Became repetitive only into the second week. Plenty for the kids to try, and you can go back again-and-again if you must. Correct sized plates too - not a measly saucer-size to try to pile food onto!
Eating Area
Buffet style, that I can see getting very congested and busy if the hotel had a higher occupancy. Food was always hot (where applicable!), and constantly refilled. Chef’s available to advise on meals, and ingredients! Kiddies specific “Flintstone” section with a greater number of high-chairs located nearby (a 50/50 mix between wooden ones [like bar stools with a strap] and the plastic types). Half-Board guests can choose to have either Lunch or Evening meal as well as the breakfast.
Room
Note: Your room card is also a key to turn on the electricity! Oh, how I laughed as my wife nearly took a fit when there was apparently no electricity when we arrived. :D Anyway – we had a twin-bed (two king-size mattresses pushed together), a cot, and a little bed all in a line. As a result there was not much room available, but what would I expect with four beds in there! Room had air-con and a ceiling fan that managed to keep the room cool. Both are loud though, so the room will have to be cool enough before the kids go to bed otherwise the noise could keep them awake. Bathroom had an over-the-bath shower. You get some soap and shower gel, a hairdryer, and the mini-bar can be cleared-out so you have a fridge. We asked for adjoining rooms on the ground floor (out of three floors) and got exactly what we wanted. No noise from adjacent rooms, or from upstairs, or from outside at night. We had a problem with the fridge turning off as we left the room… apparently it had been plugged into the wrong socket. Handyman came within 2mins and “fixed” it for us. Our “cot” was not a travel cot – this is the only thing I can think of that was a problem – it was a cheap cot with no lowering sides and a very flimsy mattress. Take your own cot sheets as the ones available are like pieces of cardboard.
Room Service
The same maid cleaned the room every single day, something that I thought was a nice touch as you got to know the maid a little (who was very pleasant to our kids). Every-day cleaning: towels replaced (if you left them on the floor as they ask), grubby finger-prints cleaned off the windows and mirrors, beds re-made (even if your wife has made them herself!), floor swept and washed, toilet cleaned. Twice-per-week was a major clean: entire bathroom cleaned (and your things tidied up!), bed linen changed.
Hotel Communal Areas
Extremely clean everywhere. There was work going on (new lighting being added) but even the handyman kept his workspace clean. There were lots of bags of linen thrown from the second and third floors onto the areas below – just so the pickup truck could retrieve them easier… we never found this to be an issue. There were a significant amount of ants on the outside walls, paths, etc… we never saw any in our room (or the other couple we were staying with, or anyone else we met there) nor any cockroaches / beetles etc. As the hotel was relatively empty whilst we were there (maybe 20% occupancy) there were loads of sun loungers and parasols – I simply do not know if there would be enough if the hotel was fully occupied. Most guests were English, with a small influx of locals over the weekends… nothing too horrible though. There is a nice three-tier fish pond at the front of the hotel – some amazingly large Coy fish that my kids enjoyed watching every day. Bearing in mind that the clientele of this hotel will be predominantly young families it was kept surprisingly quiet until ~10:00 AM. The evening entertainment is far enough away from the rooms and was quiet enough not to be irritable.
Swimming Pools
Great spacious swimming pools… varying in depth from top-to-bottom (if you view the brochure picture). Top pool with the water-spray-ball goes from ~0.5m to 0.75m, middle pool from 1m to 2m. Bottom pool was 4m in depth!! Paddling pool has a step into it (not a slope) and was maybe a foot deep in the middle. All these pools were salt-water pools. There was a swimming-lane-pool that was shaded for most of the day that was 2m in depth where “senior citizens” enjoyed a relax away from the splashing kiddies. This was also the pool where the water-polo was held for the older ones. There are also a further two (maybe three) smaller pools dotted around the complex that were fresh-water and were ~1.5m deep. All swimming pools were very safe (no missing tiles!) and had very visible edge paintings.
Activities
I did not personally partake in any organized activities, but I did see the kiddies club girls organizing football and tennis with the kids. There was also (every morning as I was going for breakfast) some people getting scuba-diving lessons in the 4m pool. There are three pool tables (one euro each), table-tennis (free), cards / dominoes etc (free) all under a canopy to keep the sun off your back.
Marina
The Marina is maybe half-a-mile away… a walk along a rather un-smooth path (horrible for pushchairs!) from the hotel. Absolutely fantastic place. There is a nice little play-park for the kiddies tucked away in the corner with bouncy castles, a small water-park, go-carts, trampolines etc (all at ~3 euros per session). There are lots of different places to eat and just about all of them with specific kiddies menu (nuggets / sausage / burger / fish fingers and chips etc) and some with the better plastic high-chairs. None played really loud music – but then again, we were finished our meals and back to the rooms by 20:00 so we were hardly out late! There is a road-train [Choo-Choo] that leaves from the Marina every 30mins that travels around the resort – a nice way to see the “other” beach and the lighthouse etc. It actually stops right outside the hotel if you fancy a cheap ride home! :D
Beaches
The [Cala n Bosch] beach beside the marina was quite busy in early-July so I would hate to see it when the resort is busy. But even better is the “other” [Son Xoriger] beach in the opposite direction – maybe a 10mins stroll away (on nice paths)… and past some amazing villa’s. Both beaches were extremely clean, and both had sharp rocks on each side (so take some flip-flops!). Both had rows of sun-loungers but there was a local cost for these. My son got stung by a jellyfish on the beach, so you should be aware that they are lurking on these beaches, but to be fair this was the one-and-only that I saw and my son still managed to get stung by it! The restaurant close-by was very understanding when I pinched three bottles of vinegar! – not that they had much choice.
Resort
Not really much going on – you have to go to the Marina. You certainly would not go to Cala n Bosch for a pub crawl. It is ideal for families with younger kids maybe up to five or six years old (if they will still happily bounce on a bouncy castle!). A token Irish bar. A typical Brit bar (Britannia) that tried desperately hard to lower the tone with karaoke and poor entertainment, although did serve surprisingly good food.
Cost
Ice-Creams and drinks were the same as they are in England.
Evening Meal (2 adults, 2 kids): ~ 35 Euros (incl. cokes and deserts for everyone)
Overall the cost was great… probably due to the Euro hitting 1.50 exchange just as we were there (so Brit’s getting 50% extra for each pound!). Not once was I shocked at what I was paying for an item.
Overall opinion: A fantastic holiday that all-in-all (incl. hire cars) came to a touch over fifteen hundred quid… we exchanged six hundred quid for spending money and without holding back managed to spend it all (just!) in the fortnight. Absolutely brilliant. Got exactly what we wanted, for a good price, that was safe and entertaining for the kids.
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Sunny Says there
are 54 visitors online
hutchins from bury st edmunds travelled to Sol Falco Hotel with
thompsons
on a family holiday.