Thassos is a place to relax on the beach, read a book and forget abot it all for a while. No great excitments, night life or sightseeing, just peace and relaxation. For such a stay you would want to have relaxing hotel with no stress and everything working. The Grand Beach Hotel was promising that through pictures and describtions (also on this site).
Unfortunately if you happen to get a room with a back view you will:
- Have leaking taps over the shower that will not be repaired through your entire stay (and probably not after that). The wall and shower will be coverd with black mould and the floor will be wet all the time. No reaction to our complains from the management.
- The toilet flush will make noises similar to a B52 bomber airplane flying over, each time you use it. Forget about flushing at night.
- View on the backyard with storage area for the bar and restaurant and a garden sculpure in the form of an old car engine right below your balcony.
- extra charges for the safe box - 2 euro, AC - 5 euro and the use for he kitchenette - 6 euro per day if you use and of them
In adition to these room features there will be:
* water dropping from the ceiling of the reception room and the male toilet in the restaurant
* boring breafast (even by greek standards - have been there +15 times) with watery coffee and extremely watery orange juice, nu butter just margarine, absolutely no fruits or vegetables, not at least ketchup to spice up the meal.
* absolutely dreadfull suppers even by the lowest standards. During 7 days we ranked 2 meals as axceptable (musaka and meat balls) 4 were bad and at least 1as poisoning (spaghetti bolognese contained smelly old meat that the local cat would not eat).
* a well organised beach bar in front of the hotel on a nice sandy beach. Unfortunately playing very loud music all day long, so if you want to have some peace walk away at least 100 meters and forget sun beds or umbrellas.
* a garden arrangement with some sort of mad men's water cascade made of concrete and stones that nevery actually worked (thank Good) and a lawn that possibly was nice 30 years ago when the hotel was build.
These are only the negative sides. There are things to praise:
* Some of the staff is very friendly (big exception for the grimm breakfast waitress, who does not understand a word in any language, but greek)
* If you have a sea view room, then the view will be nice and apart from the piping concerto it should be peacefull.
* From the outside the building looks nice, rooms are big and beds are comfortable (though not soft - so not for the yankies ;-) )
* The hotel beach is among the nicest in Limenaria with good sandy access to the sea.
* No parking problems as the hotel is on the outskirts of the village (about 15minutes walking to centre.
If you can book sea side room, want to loose some weight by not eating at the hotel and making long walks to the centre to eat, take a risk. We would rather not go there again.
