"Used Easyjet Holidays. The shuttle bus drops you off at the bottom of the path outside Hotel Santos Monaco. Its a walk slightly uphill and around a corner. Its around 170m to get to the apartments. Reception is open from 0900-1400 then 1400-1900. Luckily we did arrive in the afternoon when the reception was open. Jordi the reception manager greeted us and checked us in despite arriving before the scheduled check-in which is from 1600. Apparently the room was vacated the day before so that worked out well. He provided a local map and showed us where to go for the usual stuff like restaurants, markets etc. The safe was 14 euros for the week, but we were not asked for the 200 euro deposit for damages that was quoted on the Easyjet's website.
The hotel has rooms on the first floor to the tenth floor, with three rooms on each floor. All rooms have balcony's. We were allocated room 1A on the first floor. There are two small lifts that work quite quickly. The rooms are accessed by programmed key cards and we were given two of these. When we entered the room, we tried the patio doors and noted they would not lock properly. I went back to reception and Jordi came up and tried to fix the problem but was unsuccessful. He arranged for a specialist company to repair the problem within two hours of the report so this was excellent service. The rooms are basic but clean and well equipped. The lounge is not the biggest but adequate. There was a small table and chairs and a settee which could double as a third bed. There was also a small coffee table and side unit with flatscreen TV on it. The TV did not have BBC news etc, but after flipping through the channels I found a number of English speaking programmes. The Air Con unit which is situated above the TV was good and easy to use via a remote. The only problem was it was the only unit in the apartment so effectively you had to leave the internal doors open to get cool air to circulate. There was a complimentary bottle of water provided on the table. The kitchen was small, but had everything you need. Plenty of storage and utensils but not much working surfaces. There was a decent sized fridge freezer with a microwave perched on top. There was a coffee machine with two cartridges and a separate kettle. The induction hob worked ok once you managed to figure out how it worked. A user guide would be really helpful to aid in its use. An extractor was provided as well. Off the kitchen is a small utility room with washing machine and ironing board etc. The bathroom was good and spacious . It had a bidet and the toilet was provided with one new roll of toilet paper. The shower had a low sill and used a shower curtail which worked well. The shower was powerful and we never noticed any period when the water failed to run hot. There was a decent sized sink with toiletries provided. A wall mounted hairdryer was also provided. Ventilation was provided by opening a window in the shower area.
The bedroom was good and had two singles. We found the mattresses a little too firm, but others may think they're ok. There was addition blankets should you require them. A set of drawers was provided, along with a standing wardrobe and another wardrobe containing the safe on the other side of the room. There was hangers provided, but recommend you take additional ones as there was not enough in our view. There was plenty of selves and additional draws in the wardrobe with the safe. The safe itself was of good capacity and simple to use. Jordi on reception had given us a default code to open it. Once open you can put your own code in. The apartment had a number of electrical sockets but some of these meant our electrical items had to charged at floor level. The WiFi worked well and only once did we have o re-input the password. The first floor we where on was effectively on top on the reception and the great little bar/restaurant at ground level. This meant our balcony was huge. I would imagine apartment 1C was the same. A clothes maiden was provided along with a small patio table and four chairs. The balcony was that big we could have fit ten times as much furniture as was provided. The balcony's on the higher floors where a lot smaller, but adequate for the furniture. provided. We had sun all day on the balcony, which was good but it could get hot. We did not use the hotel pool but it looked nice with a number of sunbeds provided. The water was pretty cold but expected at the end of October. Only negative was that at this time of the year it only got sun in the afternoon for a few hours.
We arrived on the Thursday and was advised that our towels would be changed the following Monday. Apart from the towel change there was no other aspect of cleaning or replenishment provided. There was a vending machine next to the reception but we did not use it. The bar underneath the hotel seemed good and did food etc. We only used it for a couple of coffees, and it seemed to close when it wanted to. The area around the Apartments as a number of restaurants and bars, but is relatively quiet. Overall the location is excellent and just a five minute walk to a large number of bars and good restaurants. Its another five minutes to a really good beach with again lots of bars etc. The old town is about twelve minutes walk. The beach is brilliant, lovely and sandy with good access for bathing. Sunbeds are 6 euros each and a parasol also at 6 euros. There is plenty of room to use your own on other parts of beach.
Checkout was at 1100 on the day of departure. Our pickup was 1700 so required to store our cases for a few hours. The lady on duty in the reception was great and placed our cases in a locked room. She checked that we would not require them while the reception was closed. She also advised we could get changed in the room if we needed to.
I have given my review 4 out of five. Why not five you may ask ?. Well one evening around 10:30pm my wife and I was returning to the apartment after a evening out. We were nearly at the apartment and the area was quite quiet. We passed a young woman on her own stood on the payment next to a suitcase looking at her phone. As we passed her I noticed she was looking at google maps. I thought this was a little strange so I asked her where she was looking for. She advised she was looking for the Amalia apartments !!. We advised that was our apartments and pointed them out. Apparently she had booked via Easyjet and been dropped off in the same location we had been. She had been walking around trying to locate the apartments. We offered to escort her to the apartments and let her in the building. Of course the reception was closed, so I phoned the emergency number provided to us when we checked in. I spoke to Jordi the manager who apparently was in bed. He explained that she should have been notified by Easyjet that when the reception is closed the keys would need to be picked up from a different hotel. He mentioned that the instructions was on the exterior door to reception area. Its not displayed permanently but is put up as required. he advised how to get to the other hotel ( Poseidon ). This was a few hundred meters down the street. My wife stayed with the ladies case, while I accompanied her to collect the keys. The Poseidon reception was a little confused and sent us to another building in their complex before we eventually manged to retrieve the keys. This was quite poor communication of behalf of the apartments and Easyjet. The young woman had checked all her emails and App info but nothing advised of this. I checked mine as well and that was the same. If we had not happened to have met her when we did, I don't know what she would have done as the instructions at reception are not prominent at all.
Would I book these apartments again?. I would say yes, but the key pick up procedure when reception is closed needs to be sorted."
