Hotel Stefania Reviews

If you want a quiet holiday and a relaxing atmosphere this is for you.
The beach however is all stones and shingle, and is not very big, it really is just big enough to get around 20 or so sun beds on it, a small beach bar is situated just 30 yards from the front of the Hotel. Friendly staff and all the rooms were cleaned daily and towels changed frequently. The only downside was the pool, it was not cleaned out on a daily basis, while we were there it was only cleaned once, and just before a greek wedding was held in the larger of the 2 restaurants. You can get food at lunch time from the outdoor restaurant open from 1300 - to - 1530, a small selection of snacks are available.

The only other downside was the food, in the restaurant if you are on a HB/FB holiday, it was pretty bland and not much choice, most of the guests either went to the local restaurant or ate out, and even hired fridges and went shopping at the local supermarket Dio's Discount Supermarket in the town, about 10 mins walk from the Hotel, but a bonus on this was if you want to lose weight it is the place to go??..
The other Hotel you might get put in on a AOA basis, is the Hotel Palmariva (4 ***)
and all for the same price??. and we heard the food was excellent and a lot more choices and excellent accommodation and staff.

Transfer times were around 2 hrs, and Athens Airport is excellent and we had no problem getting booked in and the excellent restaurants/cafes/bar were first class, and a good place to have a quick snack or dinner before your flight home.

We Booked a late holiday with Discount holidays from the teletext pages on sky tv.

BIG mistake, first thing was flying with Air scotland operated by Greece airways, the planes must be given to them when everyone else no longer wants them, they were so old, and on a four hour flight you might think that there would be some in flight entertainment,radio or maybe a video,nothing although when i mentioned this to the captain on the return journey he did offer to sing to us.

Arriving at Athens airport no problems there, untill we were told by the rep that we now had a two hour transfer journey to our hotel which was on the island of Evia,the second largest Greek island after Crete we were told.

The bus journey was only hampered by the torrential rain,thunder and Lightning.
Oh and not to mention that every Greek driver is a nutter. The island is just over 200 km long so those of you with a picture in your minds of beautiful skies,swaying palm trees and fabulous beaches forget it, the place is so run down and dirty that for once in our holidaying lifetime we were glad we only booked aweek.
On arriving at our hotel the Stefania, we were pleasantly surprised to find that it was nice the room was very comfortable and had air conditioning included.

Once we unpacked we went for a look around, the beach was only separated from the hotel by a single track road that ran past the hotel entrance.

Now when i said beach what i really mean is the rocky dirty ten foot bit of land that 200 or so tourists were trying to lie on, there was so much rubble and debris on the Beach that it took complaints from the guests to get the hotel staff out to clear a space for us to sunbathe on, and to be fair to the staff they did a good job.

We were on a half board basis and found the food to be quite good only problem was that it was never hot enough, but again the hotel responded to the complaints by putting a microwave out for us to heat the food up for ourselves. To late for me though, Monday night food poisoning and Tuesday all day and night in bed being ill.

The village of Amarynthos is a ten minute walk from the hotel, but you take your life in your hands when you walk on the road(very few parts had any pavements)the Greeks obviously see a tourist and try there best to frighten the life out of you.

One thing that struck me as odd was how few of the Greeks spoke any English and none of the Restaurants displayed menus or prices, this was off putting so we just stuck to the hotel food.

To summarise Dirty, Dreary and Boring. I got the feeling they were not yet ready for Tourists, its as if someone just thought where will we stick this lot and the name Amarythos popped into there head and the rest is history, if anything they could probably do more damage the good to the tourism industry of Greece. Would we go Back NOT A CHANCE