"Review of Sol Lanzarote
In a nutshell
Really good location, hotel tired but it’s due a refurb apparently, food pretty good to be fair, drinks a bit meh.
The location
The location has good and bad points… The good being it’s directly on the beach and literally a 10 minute taxi (if that) to the airport. This was ideal for us as we have a 2 year old and a 5 year old so the quick taxi was great after a long day of travelling. The beachfront location was just amazing. The kids loved it. (I’ve gone into the beach a bit more lower down). The bad being there’s not loads on your doorstep bars and restaurants wise. The hotel is located in Matagorda and not Puerta Del Carmen which I was led to believe. It’s a bit of a walk to hit the busy part, but to be fair it is a nice stroll. We walked to PDC on one of the cloudier days which was supposed to take an hour but with 2 young children took us around 2 hours as they kept seeing toys etc that they wanted to buy - the joys. We had a lovely lunch there overlooking the beach and then watched the sunset which was gorgeous. Oddly, a taxi back to hotel only took 5 mins and was only 5 euros?! I’m not sure how that works but I think the beach walk must be a longer route by foot.
The rooms
The rooms are okay… they aren’t the fanciest shall we say but they are fine for how long you realistically spend in it! They are basic but roomy with a decent sized wardrobe. Half is hanger and the other half shelves. The master bedroom is next to the balcony which has two single beds in it that are pushed together which wasn’t the best. The beds are VERY firm! If you like a firm bed then great but for me as a side sleeper my shoulder started to hurt after a few nights. I was so tired most nights though that I passed out and slept well (albeit I was a little sore in the morning). There’s a sliding door between the master bedroom and the other room, which has a sofa bed and fridge in it. The sofa bed pulls out into a small double that lays virtually flat to the floor which our five-year-old son slept in. It’s okay for young children but it wouldn’t suit a teenager or adult. It’s pretty hard and it wasn’t the cleanest. Once fresh bedding was on it was fine but under the mattress it covered in hairs and dirt. They provided us with a travel cot which our young daughter slept in. The travel cot was okay but again a little dirty and ripped in places. I just tried not to look. We placed this next to our son’s bed so that we’re together. There’s a tv but there’s no English channels. We have a decent sized iPad which we used on an evening to watch the odd film though which we were grateful for. There is a microwave, fridge and kettle which was handy to have a cuppa on a night. We just grabbed a cup of milk each night from the bar area and brought our own tea bags (Yorkshire of course). The balcony was small but okay. The view from our room was beautiful. Make sure you pay for a seaview. We passed lots of rooms that weren’t seaview and noticed that people didn’t have the best view. Lots of rooms either looked onto other rooms or onto the car park or bins towards the front of the hotel which I can’t imagine was very pleasant so I would 100% recommend paying that bit extra for seaview room the view is beautiful. I watched the sunrise each morning from our balcony and it was gorgeous. Also the sound of the waves was so peaceful! The bathroom was large and okay. Again not the fanciest but it’s serves its purpose. The shower was nice and hot and the single sink area big enough for both mine and my husband’s toiletries - just. My only gripe is that there aren’t many mirrors in the room. There was only the bathroom mirror, the wardrobe mirror and then a small mirror behind the sofa bed. A full length mirror in the main bedroom would have been very welcome. There was also unfortunately lots of tiny ants running around for microwave/kettle area which was a little annoying. We couldn’t leave any food out without it becoming swarming with them. The maids however did a brilliant job each day or cleaning so thank you!
As most people have mentioned in reviews - the hotel is pretty tired looking. Lots of cracked tiles, chipped drawers, shabby looking plaster. The hotel needs A LOT of TLC. We moved rooms after the first night as it smelled really badly of damp due to the windowless bathroom. There just was no airflow at all to keep it fresh smelling. Thankfully the new room was much fresher and cleaner!
We’ve stayed in other hotels in the past where men have been constantly fixing things, replacing tiles, painting etc but we didn’t see any of that. I think unfortunately it’s just all left to carry on getting worse at this hotel but I think with a refurb looming they aren’t bothering. I will say the hotel is clean though, the restaurant staff do a great job of clearing tables and keeping it all clean. They were so fast as removing empty plates it was incredible! They aren’t maybe the friendliest shall we say but they crack on with it. They’re constantly on the go and work really hard so thank you!
The food
It was pretty good and varied. Breakfast had the usual; fried eggs, boiled eggs, mushy scrambled eggs, lukewarm beans, bread you can toast, lots of nice fresh salad, fruit etc. We liked slicing and toasting the fresh baguettes and topping them with guacamole, crushed tomatoes and scrambled eggs. The onions were lovely too! Lovely and light tasting. The croissants were okay but the pancakes were better. I loved them with Nutella and chopped bananas. Good range of fruit also with watermelon, papaya etc. Lunch was beef burgers, pizza, chicken burgers, fries, from the side beach bar until the main restaurant opened for lunch at 1:30pm with more variety. The dinner was okay with some nights better than others. We noticed the menu was set, as after a week we saw the same food coming back on again. It wasn’t amazing but it wasn’t terrible. The deserts were okay, lots of Costco style cakes, but they did put out a chocolate fountain with different things to dip in it like marshmallows and profiteroles which was yummy. My favourite meals were breakfast to be honest and then the fresh margarita pizza at lunch. We had dinner out 4 nights out of 10 to mix it up. We tried the Indian nearby (taste of India) which was okay. Then a Chinese and steak house in PDC which were both lovely!
The drinks
I know it’s very much an ‘each to their own’ thing with drinks but for us the drinks overall weren’t good. The beer was supposedly Cruzcampo but didn’t taste like it and the wine was either very low % or watered down. The cocktails were pre made and not good either sadly. I feel terrible saying this as the barman in the evening area was so lovely but my margarita literally tasted like toilet cleaner. I was so hoping for an apperol spritz or a nice margarita. I’m doing a decent review on the drinks as I couldnt find any reviews on drinks at all before booking so hopefully this will be of help. I don’t drink loads by any means - especially with 2 children but a nice drink as a treat when you’re always is always welcome! I mainly stuck to gin and tonics which were nice enough (again not full strength) or white wine/white wine spritzers which were light but good. My husband wasn’t that impressed with the beer as mentioned so stuck to gin and tonics with me or whiskey with ice which he said was okay. I wouldn’t say the alcohol is strong at all though. We noticed that we never felt drunk in all honesty which with 2 kids was perfect for us. But we went to PDC one night and had wine with our meal and both could feel it! It definitely caught us off guard as we were used to drinking wine in the hotel of course. So it was very apparent how weak the wine was in the hotel compared with a restaurant. They didn’t advertise Prosecco but noticed other people drinking it so I ordered a glass to go with my dinner from the bar and it was lovely. It’s very self serve there. They had on tap - beer, white wine, red wine, sangria, with each area being well stocked with ice and glasses. There was also a help yourself area for fizzy pop and a hot drinks machine where you could select hot water, hot milk, cappuccino and hot chocolate etc. they also did a version of baileys which lots of people were ordering and to be fair was decent. Our kids enjoyed the various juices mainly drinking apple juice with water. They also loved the hot chocolate and used these to warm up when cold. I also loved the hot milk and added brown sugar to on an evening which was really nice and warming before bed.
One thing I will mention is the location of the drinks when at the pool. It’s a shame as there is a bar area which is directly by the pool that wasn’t manned so we had to walk to the beach bar area to get a drink. It’s not a huge walk but was a bit of a faff especially when say further away/dealing with children. It would have been lovely if they put even just one member of staff on in that other bar but maybe it’s only staffed in the summer?
The pool
People with no children reserving beds at the kids pool was our biggest bug bear! The middle poor is smaller, shallow and heated making it ideal for children. As parents we needed to be able to watch our 2 and 5 year old at all times. The first day around 8:30am we managed to get 2 beds at the kids pool. We noticed 4 beds next to us were reserved so we presumed another family would be joining us soon. Finally around 2pm, 2 couples in their 60’s arrived talking about how they’d walked to the next town?! I’m not usually the type to get angry but when it comes to the safety of children it really made me mad. I was fuming when they turned up. Other parents who hadn’t been quicker had been left with nowhere to lay down, including a pregnant mother (who we gave one of our beds to) were left having to sit on surrounding walls and pitch up with restaurant chairs. It was ridiculous. This happened most days. Several times we came down to find that older couples in their 50’ and 60’s had taken up beds leaving families with nowhere to sit. I literally have no idea why they chose to take those beds when there were so many other free beds around the larger pools where children aren’t allowed to swim. There was no policing of it at all which I found really bad from the hotel. One of the older guys was even lighting up cigs?! It was really poor. A few people were smoking around the kids pool, again, lifeguards walked past but didn’t say anything. *Hotel management - I do wish that the very few beds by the small pool had a sign up to say reserved for families. This would have made things a lot easier!
The middle pool is supposedly heated but it was still fairly cold and took a bit of getting in to! It did warm up during the day though. It was the perfect height for our 5 year old too, so he was able to swim with no armbands as he could touch the bottom and is a semi strong swimmer so he loved diving down for his dive toys etc.
The other larger pools either side, were left with no one at all swimming in them which was a shame. It was around 21-23 degrees when we were there first week of December.
The staff
The reception staff were okay, Matthew a French guy who checked us in was nice at first but then pretty unhelpful and quite rude when I expressed that I wasn’t happy about certain aspects of our room after getting the key. He didn’t resolve anything for me that first night so I had to wait until the following day to speak to someone else. Rosana and Gloria were lovely though and quickly rectified things for us - thank you both so much once again. Definitely ask for either of them if you need anything sorting. There are only ever 2 receptionists on so I found I was always having to wait for one of them, they didn’t always answer the phone when we rang down either which was kind of frustrating but again that’s not their fault and they clearly work hard.
The animation team
They were brilliant! Really good fun and great with the kids! They put on lots of different activities during the day including water polo, family games, yoga, mini disco activities, balloon making, water fitness classes etc. they all worked really hard and made so much effort with the kids. We were told by Matt there was no kids club when we asked at check in - but a few days in we realised there was infact a club running? Again very disappointing as our sons loves kids club so missed around 4 days worth. Ana was brilliant with the kids - she was so good at the kids club, mini disco and just in general! she had a lovely nature with all of the children. Diego was amazing too! Really good at his job, again great with the kids. The others were good, some more friendly than others but definitely Diego, Ana and Elliot were great!
Evening entertainment
The evening entertainment was good. The hotel put on something each night with lots of variety. 8-8:30pm was kids entertainment then 9:30pm was either a singer, dancers or a band. All pretty decent. It does get very busy down there though on an evening and there aren’t a whole lot of chairs and tables for people so you need to be quick at grabbing yourself a table. We found if we got down there early enough we could grab one near the front, but as I said, you have to be quick. Things tend to wrap up around 10:30/11pm which was good as it went quiet.
The beach
The beach is beaut! The sea is a little choppy but not too bad and it can get a bit windy but the sun keeps you lovely and warm. There are beds with parasols immediately on the beach as you exit hotel. 1 bed is €7 and it’s €10 for 2 which we thought was pretty reasonable. We had a mix of beach and pool days as we found we got a little bored by the small kids pool all day long.
We were able to go back into the hotel to grab drinks and food. They give you these green plastic cups that you can use around for pool and beach. One of the days they had a bbq on which was lovely as we had freshly grilled burgers and G&Ts sat watching the waves which was just heavenly. I will say the staff are very relaxed here which I loved. I never got told off once for taking food out of the restaurant which was nice.
Last comment on the beach - make sure you go down to watch the sunrise! I went down for 6:40am one morning as I woke up early and couldn’t get back to sleep and oh my gosh I’m so glad I did! It was absolutely breathtaking. I sat on the sand for a full hour and watched the sky change colours before the sun rose literally out of the sea at around 7:30am. It was so magical! Definitely try and do this but take a cardi or jumper as it’s cold around that time of the morning.
Things we will do differently next time would be to take warmer clothes for the evenings, pack some cordial for the kids as we couldn’t find any in the supermarkets and probably buy a nice bottle of gin for our G&Ts.
Overall it was an amazing holiday once Rosana moved us - thank you so much again! You saved our holiday. Will we come back? Definitely."
