Villa Dahl

Spent 4 nights end Dec/start Jan. On the bottomline: this is a very fine small beach resort which - with some improvement on the service side of things - deserves to be permanently fully booked. Situated directly to a very nice beach which seems to be off the beaten track since I ran into very few other tourists (and hence, very few local sales people) on my walks there. If you are looking for something quiet and relaxed, this place has any potential. The "but" is: I experienced way too much bass-and-drum "music" on two of my days there - of which one may be excused by the fact that the local people were invited to celebrate New Year's Day on the hotel's premises. No offense in general to that, though: you will have the local community in the backyard, and the Tanzanians are nice people to mingle with. The quality of the kitchen varies, apparently depending on who is the chef of the day. However, on my last evening I was served the best French fries I have had for years accompanied by some juicy, very tasty grilled chicken, balanced with a slump of coleslaw-like veggies. Important since you will not find a lot a typical tourist restaurants nearby so you will probably tend to eat at the hotel. Otherwise, on the service side of the thing: room maintenance/improvement of basic things like shower and TV should have a focus, and some employees, in particular in the waiters' team, seem to need training. Nevertheless: Villa Dahl has any chance of becoming 5 out of 5. Try it.