A *** hotel, not a bad one. The staff is ok, polite and helpful. The rooms are basic, cleaned every day (not very thoroughly), bed linen and towels changed every other day. The canteen (not a restaurant, by any means) is more or less acceptable, if you take care to avoid dated sausages and weird-looking salads, the pool and the bar are the same: basic, but acceptable.
There are two major reasons two avoid this hotel, though:
1. The ROAD: very busy; noisy cars and motorbikes day and night, it is impossible not only to relax, but to sleep properly at night. I guess the noise is heard from everywhere in the hotel, since the hotel itself is just six 3-storyed buildings crammed between the road and the hill. There’s no territory, no fence, or greenery (a few olives and palm trees jammed between the buildings and the pool do not count), or anything to seclude the hotel form the road, so it is more of an overgrown car-park than a holiday spot. The lower hotel of Lagomandra Beach is the same plus the persistent smell of sewage.
Throughout our stay I got an impression that the whole of Balkan Peninsula was heading towards the beach of Lagomandra for their holiday, way too many people, and lots of families with 3 to 5 kids each, adding to the general noise, unrest and lack of privacy in Lagomandra.
2. The BEACH. This was my most bitter disappointment, since I was prepared to put up with some inconvenience just to see the “golden sand” and “pristine waters” of Lagomandra. Well, as you may guess, the beach was overcrowded with Balkan holidaymakers, very noisy and unclean. Lots of cigarette butts, plastic cups, wraps, sticks, pine needles, and whatnot, on the sand which is grey and reminds of very small granite fractions. The sea is rather deep just 3 steps away from the shore. So it looked like a very dense soup of small kids and their parents along the shoreline. Lagomandra hotel charges 6 Euro per umbrella + 2 sun beds. They really could hire someone to clean the beach, once in a while. The water, in mid-august, was COLD. Generally, it was not a big treat, please believe me. To add, the beach tavern is just awful. Dirty, not tasty, very slow service, and very expensive at that. Oh, and music from the beach bar all day long.
The nearby town of Neos Marmaras deserves one visit, no more. Unclean, generally not interesting, no place to dine out.
All in all, Lagomandra is not a place for a relaxing and peaceful holiday. It makes you wish you left your ears at home. The beauty of the place is spoiled by the road and by the hotel itself. I would not recommend it, but it seems that hordes of nomads would)).