Arillas is a wonderful resort, we have had a lovely time there this year, but the Arillas Bay Apartments are doing their best to ruin the resorts fine and deserved reputation in 2008.
What’s the difference between the Arillas Bay Apartments 2008 and Guantanamo Bay? Well having not actually been interned in the Cuban facility without trial I can only imagine the difference is the linen is changed on a more frequent basis at Camp X-Ray.
We, like many others arrived on a Monday (30th June) and were shown to our apartment (B5) by the wonderful Jayne (Thomas Cook). It was clear that for 2008 season the owners of the AB had added sweet FA, the apartment was full of bugs, there were squashed insects on the walls that required removing with a quantity of scrubbing. The kitchen tap leaked the whole stay. The glass in the front door was cracked. A third of the shower curtain was missing. The fixed shower head made the water spew over the top of the remaining curtain if fitted correctly in place, the drain in the bathroom stank and was useless as the water much preferred to run into the kitchen rather than the drain (poor design) the ‘maid’ would leave a manky mop an bucket with filthy water in the corner, never emptying it away and the linen and tattered towels were changed once a week, if you stayed a single week that meant never. I could go on but there are more important issues with this place.
The Sea Breeze bar and restaurant would not look out of place in the opening scenes of a Spaghetti Western (dusty and run down) and the once popular restaurant on the beach was almost constantly empty. The owners avoided and questions regarding fans, linen or safety deposit boxes with a shrug of the shoulders in the timely’ I don’t speaka the lingo’. The whole pool area was umbrella free and the gardens were a mess.
Now the real bad points. Three nights into our stay someone attempted to force entry into out apartment twice, twice they failed and I slept the remainder of the night in my shorts with a pen knife in my hand. I missed the rep the next day and let the incident go. On the Friday night we were awoken by shouting and found that the next apartment had the same happen to them. Twice someone tried to force entry and was actually chased by the guest. Twenty minutes later it happened again, but this time a posse of guests caught the guy and frogmarched him to the Sea Breeze and to the owners. This served no purpose at all as the 'Albanian' gentleman was a summer tenant of the AB and lived in the back of the property in a little cottage. We explained the situation, while he sat there stuffing his fat little Umpa Lumpa face all smug lucking having a laugh in tongues with the owners.
We were assured he would be made to leave. He was not. We saw the Thomas Cook rep Jayne the next day and she said she would sort it out or we would be entitled to compensation paid by the AB. We were issued emergency numbers to call if future incidents occurred. That night, mindful of a full day trip to Parga and Paxos we had an early night, returning to the AB we observed the Albanian person leaving the Sea Breeze and heading up his hovel (still there) We retired for the night, only to be disturbed minutes later by someone attempting to gain access to out apartment again. By the time I got to the door whoever it was, was gone. I called the emergency number and a Thomas Cook rep said the authorities had be informed.
Following our boat trip we discovered a young couple on the other side of us who were terrified at nights, but had not actually had an attempted break in, had been moved to the Akti Arilla Hotel. We waited to see Jayne on the Monday and via Thomas Cook, paid by the AB we were also moved to the Akti Arilla Hotel. By the time we left Arillas on the 14th July 4 couples had been moved in the 2 weeks we were there and we believe that makes 8 couples for June/July.