Santa Marina Hotel

A really lovely hotel with good facilities in an amazing location, overlooking the village and sea. Kind, friendly and helpful staff Comfortable beds, spotlessly clean rooms and bathroom Towels changed and room cleaned daily Special Toiletries, shampoo and shower gel provided. Locally produced with olive oil. Beautiful pool area and good pool bar Excellent food - we took half board. A lovely buffet every evening. Stacks of fresh produce and a good variety. I am gluten intolerant and had plenty I could eat. Access is uphill on quite a steep road. It’s fine if you are reasonably fit but would be difficult or impossible if you had mobility problems. You could get a taxi from the hotel. The weather was tremendous. We took the seven islands boat trip from Nidri It cost €35 for the whole day. The trip was booked for us by the Jet2 representative who visited when we phoned. She supplied the tickets and organised a taxi from the hotel. It all worked perfectly. This was such a lovely day - swimming at two different stunning beaches, inaccessible except by sea, visiting Fiskardo in Kefalonia which is incredibly pretty and going around the islands of Scorpio to see where Onassis lived. The lady from Jet 2 also gave us advice about local buses and beaches We went to Lefkada town twice We saw the churches, the archeological museum, the market square and war memorial. We walked along the beautiful sea front marina which is being extensively renovated and lovely new paving laid and visited cafes and shops. All in all a lovely relaxing holiday Would throughly recommend.

First things first, the Santa Marina is at the top of a very steep hill and the hotel’s drive is even steeper! We knew this before we booked but we didn’t anticipate just how tough the walk up from the village of Agios Nikitas would be in July in the middle of a heatwave! But the hotel is worth the walk. Set in lovely surroundings the hotel is peaceful and quiet. There’s a lovely large pool with plenty of sunbeds and umbrellas. That being said the sunbeds have seen better days and need updating and the area round the pool needs some tlc – a little **** wouldn’t go amiss! The pool was also very warm and wasn’t too refreshing when taking a dip but the 2 showers were lovely and cool. There’s a pool bar which opened around 10:30 after breakfast finished and didn’t close until late. The prices were ok, €4.70 for a large draught Mythos, around €4 for a freddo cappuccino. The bar snacks were quite reasonably priced we thought - €6 for a chicken club which comes with chips and is enough for 2. There was also a large pizza for about €4 which would feed an army. Small bottles of water were €0.60. There’s also a lifeguard on duty – Yannis who was very nice and Antonios was the barman who loved making cocktails. The hotel has an international clientele with hardly any Brits which wasn’t a bad thing! There are no sunbed wars and most guests tended to only stay at the pool for a while and then they were off in their cars exploring the rest of Lefkada. Our bedroom was perfectly adequate with a lovely little balcony that overlooked the village and the sea below. The aircon was included and looked brand new and the bathroom was very modern with a corner shower cubicle with sliding doors and a proper shower that you didn’t have to hold in one hand! There was also complimentary shampoo and shower gel. There was a wardrobe and safe and a dressing table with mirror. The French doors to the balcony seemed very new and also had shutters so everything felt very safe. The beds were also really comfy. The balcony however didn’t have any washing lines which I think would be a useful addition. The rooms were cleaned every day and the towels and I think the bedding were changed on a daily basis. I cannot fault the cleanliness of this hotel and the cleaners worked tirelessly. Mina looked after our room and she was amazing. Breakfast was good. There was something for everyone. This ranged from fruit (mostly tinned peaches, prunes and dried apricots) to pastries, to fried eggs, omelettes, sausage, beans, fresh tomatoes and feta, cereals, homemade cake and the obligatory toast machine! The juice was from a machine which obviously wasn’t fresh and another machine for hot water and coffee. Now for the negative. The dining room had a lovely large terrace with amazing views but you couldn’t sit outside as it was infested with wasps. I don’t know if this is normal for July (we normally holiday in September) or if the heatwave had exacerbated things but they were everywhere. In the e