Cala Cartoe Beach

The hotel is located in a convenient spot with most things in walkable distance or a quick bus ride away. They're redoing the street in front of the hotel--nothing to do with the hotel, but if you have mobility issues, it might be a problem as taxi can't come near the door. The inside itself is unique with all sorts of bric brac scattered about. The rooms were spacious and had everything you need. Worth noting that unless you have a harbour view, your windows will open into a pretty depressing indoor courtyard, with little light--it's a historic building, this isn't unusual but worth noting. The only real issue is the issue with the keys-- the doors have the original locks on them. Which is fine, except by their own admission the one for Room 4 is problematic. It was a pain to open and close and frankly the whole door didn't seem very secure anyways. You had to leave your keys at the front desk when you went out which would be fine if they a) told you that when you checked in so you didn't get a lecture later, and made sure there was always someone at the front desk or the door was unlocked. Unfortunately a number of times I was forced to wait around for someone to come back when I was heading out, so I could leave my key. If they could get this ridiculous key situation sorted I'd happily give them a 5/5, but over 3 days it became increasingly annoying.

The hotel is nice, but quite old. The room was certainly not worth the 4-star rating. The food was good but not exceptional. The staff were courteous, but, due to several different teams working there, some things were overlooked (for example I was not told that, on a specific evening, there would be no dinner before 8:30pm - to their credit the restaurant staff did make me a sandwich at 7:30pm, as I did not want to wait until 8:30pm to eat). Having the tennis courts and pool available, as well as a lovely beach, was very convenient.