We first visited this family hotel in 2001 when we were due to get married in Lindos. The first visit we saw a fledgling family hotel, a mom & pop place with the sons working. A small pool and 40 rooms.
A planned return brought about a melancholy feeling. Our first visit was with our young children, I was a diving instructor and used to do 100 laps of the pool in the morning to keep up my in water fitness. This time I returned in a wheelchair following my accident.
A return in 2012 and you can see they had invested heavily. Still a mom & pop place, with the three boys doing their bit, plus some wives. We arrived at 10.00pm late October with the temperature at a balmy 24c. The complex, that’s what I will call it now as the hotel is spread over around 10 acres, now employs a couple of English speaking people on the reception.
The week before we travelled I phoned to make sure they had received the information from Thompson’s about needing a ground floor room due to the wheelchair. They told me they had not but don’t worry they would sort it out.
So arriving and giving out names, we were taken to our ground floor room by the English speaking chap without having to check in. Getting into the room we were given the keys, code to the safe that...We first visited this family hotel in 2001 when we were due to get married in Lindos. The first visit we saw a fledgling family hotel, a mom & pop place with the sons working. A small pool and 40 rooms.
A planned return brought about a melancholy feeling. Our first visit was with our young children, I was a diving instructor and used to do 100 laps of the pool in the morning to keep up my in water fitness. This time I returned in a wheelchair following my accident.
A return in 2012 and you can see they had invested heavily. Still a mom & pop place, with the three boys doing their bit, plus some wives. We arrived at 10.00pm late October with the temperature at a balmy 24c. The complex, that’s what I will call it now as the hotel is spread over around 10 acres, now employs a couple of English speaking people on the reception.
The week before we travelled I phoned to make sure they had received the information from Thompson’s about needing a ground floor room due to the wheelchair. They told me they had not but don’t worry they would sort it out.
So arriving and giving out names, we were taken to our ground floor room by the English speaking chap without having to check in. Getting into the room we were given the keys, code to the safe that needed paying for and air conditioning, again something that needed paying before checking in. Not in this instance. We were told to pop along in the morning without passports and sort out the two extra items.
Going down to the complex’s restaurant we were served by the oldest of the Son’s Michael. We never said a word, half way through taking our order, he stopped and welcomed us back! He remembered our first visit, our kids and our wedding. For someone running a hotel complex that has some 400 rooms and sees thousands of people a season, to remember us was staggering. It was not as if anything happened on our last visit that would make him recall us, well apart from 9/11. He thanked us for coming back and asked us where our now grown up children were.
We ordered our meal and many happy memories of just why Greece is our favourite holiday nation came flooding back. The standard of the meals are good and reasonably priced. We have eaten at places where it was better (food wise), and more expensive.
For us, the only problem came about due to my being in a wheelchair and the complex being on a 1 in 10 slope which was a killer. My wife nearly had a heart attack every day trying to get up it. Going down was an issue too. I managed to break my wheelchair when we lost control of the handles the chair’s break broke. This added to the “careful” people at the airport who managed to break the foot rest!
Back to the hotel. If has one big pool which is around 6ft deep at the far end, 15 metres wide by 40 metres long. There was a small padding pool on the second level, then a round free form pool by the street side bar and restaurant. That pool was 5ft deep.
The place is not somewhere I would now say is for kids if you cannot get one of the four two room apartments. The rest are all two bedded rooms.
Entertainment is the usual Karaoke, quiz and singer throughout the week. But as the village has a lot of bars and restaurants the vast majority of clients go out or eat at the bottom restaurant.
Pefkos as a village has not really lost its charm. It grew massively in the early 1990’s and now is showing it. If like me you are in a wheelchair or use a stick, think twice about visiting Rhodes as the words “easy access” don’t exist. I managed to get around with a lot of arm muscle and a wife pushing like hell. To get around the village you have no choice but wheel yourself on the road. An experience that is hairy in the day, but terrifying at night. I was convinced on more than one occasion I was going to be a hood ornament on a taxi.
Pefkos is only a five minute taxi ride from Lindos. A great place which is featured in many photos of the island, but is five times as expensive as anywhere else on the island. Again, not very wheelchair friendly with the gradients and steeps, but I suppose no one thought of that 3000 years ago when they built the place! The beach is sandy until you get into the water, and it becomes stones. You could see many people struggling once in the water.
Back to the complex, the family remembered us and always said hello whenever passing. The shop on site pretty much sells what you need to get along while on holiday. The rest of the complex is clean, in good condition and safe. The only problem you find is the bands of roaming dogs and cats moving through the village at different times of the day.
Back to the room which was cleaned every day apart from one, the bathroom looked a tad tired. Ants were a problem if you dropped anything on the floor and forgot to pick it up. There’s the usual sink, fridge and kettle. A TV with a lot of channels from Dubi. The cleaners added a romantic note every time they cleaner by putting love heart’s from petals on the bed.
So that’s the end of my mini review. Would we go back again? Maybe in ten years if I were able to walk properly again, if not, then no. The island, towns, villages and complex are only designed for people with two working legs.More
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