Overall this was a great holiday in an excellent hotel.
I flew from Gatwick, where there was a JY rep to help us check in. We sat in the plane for an hour before takeoff with no apparent reason - perhaps we had missed our slot.
On arrival at Faro airport, there was a local JY rep who checked us off her list as we arrived. We set off in the coach to our hotel, but after about half an hour were surprised to find ourselves back at Faro airport. We had left behind a member of our group in the toilet. The rep had failed to count us up on the coach.
We arrived at the hotel just before 4pm, where our tour manager Gina met us, and advised us to go straight into lunch as it was just closing. So we had rather an unexpectedly late lunch, due to the delay at Gatwick and our return to Faro airport.
The food in the hotel was always very good with an excellent choice, although as has been mentioned elsewhere, it wasn't always that hot. There was always a section with local specialities, and one evening this was an excellent seafood buffet. The meals were all help-yourself buffets, with red, white and rose wine at lunch and dinner literally on tap from large boxes. However the red wine was so rough - almost like vinegar- that it proved undrinkable for most of us. We got round this by getting red wine from the bar, which came out of a bottle, not a box.
The restaurant and bar were both a bit understaffed. We frequently had to wait in the morning for hot water for the tea, or for the coffee which was served directly to you in a jug. There was sometimes a wait for food to be replenished which had run out. There was usually only one girl on duty in the bar.
The 'all-inclusive' worked very well, with a good selection of alcoholic and soft drinks available all day until 11pm. There was also afternoon tea/coffee and cake for those who could manage it after a large lunch. I spent very little money all week.
The hotel was an attractive building, with a lovely sandy beach, with safe swimming, down a short path through sand dunes. The outdoor swimming pool was a bit too chilly for me. You had to pay €10 for the indoor swimming pool. There were always plenty of free sun loungers available around the pool. You had to pay €6 for 4 hours for the sun beds on the beach. This was never a problem as a few of us tended to share the shade from one sun lounger.
The rooms in the hotel were very good - clean and spacious. However the view from the rooms varied a lot, from looking directly out on to the car park, to rooms with a lovely balcony with sea view. These seemed to be in short supply, and very few of our group had managed to obtain rooms with balconies. It seems that you have to book early to get one.
There were several included excursions, and an optional bird watching excursion, which were all very good. Most of us chose not to do all of them, as we wanted a couple of days to relax by the pool or on the beach. 7 days seemed quite short to see everything, maybe 10 days would have been better.
Unfortunately about halfway through the week, a number of people suffered from a sickness and diarrhoea bug. There were 39 of us, and about 170 in a Saga group, as well as a large number of other guests in the hotel, and of course we all ate at close quarters in the restaurant. We heard that about half a dozen of the Saga group had Norovirus, though I don't know if it was actually this or just a bug of some sort. Some people in our group were quite ill, and I went off my food for a few days. The hotel didn't appear to do anything to stop the spread of it. A couple of containers of hand gel appeared near reception, and at the entrance to the restaurant, but most people didn't bother to use it, and the hotel made no attempt to try and get people to use it. We heard that there had been a similar outbreak a couple of weeks previously.
Apart from this, it was a great holiday with some lovely people in our group, and we had a lot of fun. There was entertainment in the hotel both in the daytime and evening. Gina was friendly and well organised (unlike the rep at Faro airport), and everything ran smoothly. I would definitely go back again.
