Kahlua Boutique Hotel

Great place, excellent location, very good breakfast, service with all the heart

We had a great,large room with sea view - incredible! Close to the beach and restaurants which is important because you should definitely book your stay WITHOUT breakfast at all costs! the service was miserable and the breakfast below average (every day for one week in a row).

Firstly, I should say that before our holiday we noticed there were very few recent Trip Advisor reviews of Kahlua Boutique Hotel. At the end of our stay, we mentioned this at the reception desk and were told some hotel guests review the adjoining restaurant (Kahlua Beach Bar) instead. There may be some points about the hotel included amongst those reviews. Location - probably the best bit. Breakfast literally right next to the sea felt idyllic (surprisingly some people still chose to eat inside). Kahlua Boutique Hotel is conveniently placed in the middle of a long row of restaurants and bars running right along the sea front (with a marina at one end). It was the end of the season so there wasn’t much entertainment anyway (could have done with a pub quiz … the nearby Irish bar is missing a trick) - although we did enjoy some Greek dancing in one of the restaurants. Inland and running parallel to the seafront is a road filled with souvenir shops (including some called '******** Shop'!), clothes shops, a few more eating/drinking places and supermarkets etc. It’s not too far from Heraklion airport (about 30 mins drive). For those who don’t mind walking up hill (alternatively you could pay for a taxi), I thoroughly recommend a 15-minute evening stroll up to Koutouloufari where the restaurants and bars are quaint, more traditionally Greek and less touristy than on the sea-front. It's well worth a visit - just for the atmosphere really - although we also enjoyed a great meal at The Alchemist there. Just along from Koutouloufari - and also worth a visit - are Piskopiano (where we were entertained by some live Greek music in one of the restaurants) and Old Hersonissos (with a particularly nice little bag shop run by a delightful elderly lady who makes the bags herself). We also caught a bus (very cheaply) to Malia - another popular resort … just to see if we were missing anything. We weren’t - Hersonissos is much prettier. Room - ours was in the new part of the hotel (across the road from the reception area and right next to the pool). Clean, bright and modern. I will mention a few negatives - but none of these really bothered us: 1) no wardrobe (just hanging space - with insufficient hangers so we asked for more) 2) no cupboards or shelves - although there were a few surfaces to put things on 3) Hairdryer badly positioned (too far away from the mirror to use both at the same time. If this is an issue, I would say take your own hairdryer). 4) It was great to have a fridge but the interior was badly designed so things tended to fall out 5) We obtained a key for the safe from reception but initially weren’t told that the instructions on the safe (regarding using a code) no longer apply. There is a knack to opening and shutting the safe door - turning the key one way while turning the dial the other. 6) Other reviews have mentioned noise as being a major issue but as our visit was in October, I assume the resort wasn’t as lively as it is in the summer. I