Constantin Reviews

Hotel and tour operator very good. No complaints at all. Hotel is in convenient place for buses, harbour and beaches. Plenty of good eating polaces and bars, would recommend Scalinis, excellent food and staff are very friendly. The same goes for a pleasant drink and company at the Norden Bar.

Just back from a wonderful week in Rhodes.

Can't tell you much about the island as we chose a relaxing holiday and didn't do much travelling around, but Rhodes Town is just gorgeous.
Well, Old Town that is.

It's amazing, a maze of narrow streets, leading to bustling little squares, we found new streets everytime we went for a stroll.
I've honestly never been anywhere prettier in all my life, would recommend to anyone.

Temperatures in August were around 33 degrees, but there was a very welcoming breeze which kept everything bearable.

It's definitely more a scandanavian resort. Not many English / Irish to be seen or heard!!!!

The beach is just pebble, so not that great, but the water is lovely and warm, there's plenty of watersports to do and lots of sunloungers, so I guess it depends on what you're after.

We found a gorgeuos restaurant that was so good we went 3 times!! I can't remember it's name. It's wasn't called Olympia, but something like that.
It's just off to the left of Socratous St, and directly across from Romeos restaurant.
I had Soutzoukakia and Stifado (2 traditional Greek dishes) there and it was gorgeous.

The Hotel:-
Outside impressions aren't great, but not worrying either. The lobby is nice.
The rooms could do with a bit of refurbishment but they are spotless and more than adequate. Cleaned and new towels everyday.
Pool area is reasonable, perhaps a little small.
Buffet breakfast is adequate:- rolls, croissants, bread, selection of cold meats, cheese, olives, cucumber, tomato, type salad items, toast, hard-boiled eggs, museli and cornflakes, tea, coffee or juice, and you can take as much as you like.

The bar is reasonable priced and the staff are friendly.

It was my partners birthday while we were staying and the hotel sent up a complimentary bottle of sparkling wine to our room (they checked the booking details, as we did not tell them) It was a really nice gesture.

The hotel is centrally located, pretty close to everything. One of the roads outside can be a bit noisey, but didn't actually prevent me from sleeping. Some nice views from the room.
You pay extra from air-con, (?6-8 per day, can't exactly remember), you definitely need it)

We went to Lindos, quite picturesque, the acropolis (?6) is quite nice, but it's very warm, plus there's a nice beach.

We went to the water park (?20ea for adults), pleasant day out.

Went to Turkey for a day. Rep was charging ?90 each per adult, we booked it down at the harbour for ?45 each (including the port tax)
A courtesy bus picks you up in Marmaris (Turkey), they bring you to a Gold Centre, to the bazaar, to a carpet shop and to a Turkish Delight factory.

If you enjoy shopping, then the new town is full of all the big designer named shops.

All in all, a really enjoyable holiday and I wouldn't hesitate to return to the Constantin hotel again.

Just back from Rhodes town where we stayed 2 weeks in Hotel Constantin. Hotel bedrooms have frig and Tv, beds very basic. Breakfast adequate for medium appetites.We were on floor 5 overlooking Rhodes Harbour which was wonderful.Pool area small , it was early season but couln't get sunlounger as people left towels on when they left, good job we had sunny balcony in morning.

Loved Rhodes town,great trips to Kos and Symi but do book them yourself down harbour , half Kosmar rep price.You can go to Lindos on bus but it gets packed so be warned.Went with Kosmar ,everything OK until Thurs before leaving Saturday when Rep told us we were going to go fly back to East Midlands airport instead of Stansted , offered 30 euros compensation take it or leave it. Got there, no transport turned up to transfer us to Stansted for an hour then minibus, by the time we got home we were 7 hours later than we should have been. Be prepared to be messed about flightwise if you go with Kosmar.Couldn't fault BMI aircraft or crew, very good .

Staff at Hotel Constantin very nice and very relaxed atmosphere. Lots of eating places for all budgets, enjoyed self service at the Yellow Spot restaurant.Loved our stay but flying home to airport so far from our departure airport means we'll never go with Kosmar again.

Okay, lets start from the beginning...I would never recommend anyone using Kosmar! Here's why: After being delayed 50 minutes at Newcastle airport, with no other explaination other than ";the plane was late setting off from Rhodes"; we arrived at Rhodes, collected our luggage and were transferred to our resort quite swiftly (tranfer is only 20 mins from airport to Rhodes Town).

We arrived at the hotel at about 6am with a few other couples and a Kosmar rep. The rep told us to leave our cases in the lobby as the hotel had opened the dining room for breakfast early for our arrival. Wanting nothing more but to sleep rather than eat, I assumed that for some reason our rooms weren't yet ready for us to check in and that it would be ready for us after breakfast.

So off we went to the dining room, very tired but I suppose equally starving. Half way through breakfast we were approached by the dining room manager and asked for our room no. obviously, as we had not been told we could check in we did not yet have our room number. After trying to explain this to him several times in as plain English as I could, my boyfriend was fuming and told me that he'd just noticed that the rep who brought us was sitting two tables away in full earshot of the conversation and had not even bothered stepping in to help us out!!

After finishing our breakfast myself and my boyfriend were confused as to what we were supposed to do be doing next. Being already frustrated with the rep I didn't really want to acknowledge her but decided it was our only option to ask her what the situation was. When I approached her table I asked her if our rooms were now ready and if we could check-in (at this point, let me say, we are not naive or stupid, we've been on quite a few holidays abroad in recent years with various tour operators and every time we have been taken to reception by the rep and checked-in). Looking rather disgusted that we'd dared to interrupt her breakfast she told us that she had no idea whether our rooms where ready or not and that she didn't know if we could check in coz she wasn't our rep!!!!

Now I've finished giving you an example I'll continue LOL

HOTEL:
Contantin is located quite near to the very tip of Rhodes (new) Town, not far from the Casino, the rooms are comfortable and basic, they have a fridge, TV (only english channel was CNN) but who goes on hol to watch TV in their room?! Bathroom was tiny but clean, no probs with hot water for showers even though I must have used gallons! Air-con (payable at reception) is about 6 euro a day. Although, there is a sensor on the patio doors meaning that if you have them open the air-con automatically goes off, they also have shutters on the outside of the patio door which slide across that keep the room cool whilst your out through the day.
There are safety deposit boxes for hire in the reception, can't remember how much it was to hire but I think it was pretty reasonable.

The hotel has a pool which is really small, its only open between 10am and 6pm and is over looked on all sides by other apartments. Kicking out time on the day of departure was 2pm, we could have extended this to 6pm for 15 euros but we didn't see much point as we weren't getting picked up for the airport til 3am! When you have to kill that much time 4 hours doesn't make much of an impact! The hotel didn't provide anywhere to get a shower or change either once you had vacated your room, this also applied to a Gatwick flight that wasn't getting picked up from the hotel til 4:30am!! The hotel had a lot of Scandinavians and a few Germans so be warned, they queue at the doors for the pool opening!

RESORT:
Rhodes Town (old and new combined) is vast! On maps it looks as though the walk from the Constantin to the old town is a long way but its not too bad, about 20 mins if your taking it easy. The best way to find your way around (which quite a few people seemed to be doing) is to get a map off your (real) rep at the meeting and mark where your hotel is and as you wander round mark on a restaurant you liked or McDonalds (look out for the McDonalds delivery cars - cute!) or Pizza Hut (Mon-Thur as many pizzas as you can eat for 7 euros), you can do all this in your 1st day and save wasting a tonne of time wandering around getting lost! Believe me it works! lol

Tonnes of shopping to be had!! Bennetton has three stores, Gucci, Ralph Lauren etc. (all real, not copied)pleanty of the usual tourist shops aswell. Old town is huge, there's pretty much one main street that goes through with loads and loads of shops selling everything and anything! Very pretty and picturesque.
Hundreds of restaurants and cocktail bars to choose from, didn't have a bad meal once! I'd recommend the place on the corner opposite Jason's and the mini-market,(about 3 blocks back from the Constantin) friendly staff, good food, good prices. Also, visit the Blue Lagoon, very cool pirate ship themed bar, drinks are quite expensive but your paying for your surroundings here.

We did notice that the English seemed to be out numbered by Scandinavians and Germans in the resort aswell as the hotel, not a major problem but after a couple of days it got us down a bit. Was so relived to find a bar in Faliraki that just played Friends DVDs all day, just needed to hear someone speaking English!

The excursions with Kosmar were extremely over priced, if you want to go to Turkey, got to the harbour and book it yourself, we enquired and found it was at least 20 euro cheaper and a lot were doing deals for families such as letting the kids under 10 go free.
We went on our own excursion to Faliraki for the day, we got a taxi at the taxi rank near the old town. Cost 13 euros. Taxi drivers are really nice and friendly. Faliraki seemed nice, slightly cheaper than Rhodes town for food, drink and shopping, we were only there through the day so didn't see whether it was as bad as its made out to be - suspect it isn't.

WEATHER
Temperatures were very high day and night, although Rhodes Town can be quite breezy which is a Godsend! We were using SPF 15 and sunbathing from about 10:30, at that time the burn-time was about 45mins.

Got picked up for the airport to go home at 3am, got to the airport only to be told that the flight was delayed by 1hr 40mins!! Again, told it was just ";running late";! Other people on this site have warned about Kosmar but you don't expect them to have CONSTANT delays!

VERDICT
Wouldn't go to Rhodes Town again but only coz I've been there and done it now, we're not the type of people who'd go to the same hotel in the same resort 10 years in a row! lol
Wouldn't go to the Constantin again either, pool is way smaller than what I'm used to, no facilites if your on a late pick up and its used exclusively by Kosmar.

just been to rhodes town, absolutly briliant.
flew from birmingham with british midlands, no complaints, except we ha to land at kos for a hour to drop off passengers and pick up others, unlike my son and his wife who flew a week before with skandic. they had no food, only one drink,which they had to buy, but they were offered a salad roll for £5. don't go with skandic from east midlands.

the hotel was clean and friendly, we ask for an extra pillow and within ten minutes we had two. rooms were cleaned every day. breakfast was the usual continental, no bacon and eggs, but there was plenty of it, so you could fill up at breakfast and this would last until you went for a meal at night.

best place that we found was a restraunt called ZUM ZUM, turn left out of the hotel go to the main road turn left againkeep walking, zum zum is on the right.

rhodes town is full of scandinavians, all very friendly. explore the little allyways, lovely little bars.
rhodes old town is unbelievable, walk round the moat inbetween the walls. walk on top of the walls. explore the little side streets, get lost, you will be amazed. it's a trip back in time.
enjoy your self, but do it at a leisurly pace.

one of the best holidays we have had.