Last week my 11 yo son Jonny and I stayed at the Marina
Apartments (or Apartmentos Marina to give them their Spanish name). I thought I'd write a review on here as the
apartment we stayed at was excellent and I can thoroughly recommend a
stay there.
The Marina Apartments can be found near the marina at the start of the pine walk between Gran Cafe 1919 and the
Daina Hotel. So the location was pretty much perfect for us - close to the beach, the pine walk (obviously!), the bus stop, the square and, most importantly, only 5 mins walk from our fave cafe Dolç Sa Pobla for breakfast!
I first found out about these apartments from
this thread on here and as soon as I saw the potential view from the top floor apartments I just had to book one for our 2012 holiday. And I am so pleased that I did as this was the view from our apartment 4.1:
sunny pano blue sky copy.jpg by
SimonButlerPhotography, on Flickr
(to see a larger version of the above photo
click here)
The apartment was on the 4th, and top, floor of the building and contained a lovely large terrace from which I took that photo. The photo is actually a stitch together of 16 individual photos so it gives an almost fish-eye effect which over emphasises the size of the roof slates to the size of the marina and sea. The marina and sea looked a lot larger in real life!
Pep, the manager was really friendly and helpful. It turned out that he is also a keen photographer and was only to happy to show me his amazing Paris-Dakar rally photos.
But the apartment wasn't just great for the view, and for photography, it was a very nice apartment too. I have to apologise that I can't share with you any photos of the inside of the apartment. I did take loads but unfortunately I think I deleted them by mistake. So you will have to make do with a text description instead.
I would describe the apartment as comfortable and very functional. The décor was a little dated and it wasn't 5* quality but perfectly fine for the two of us. It was a one bedroom apartment with twin beds which were also comfortable. The air-con in both the large lounge and the bedroom worked really well and was very welcome with the 40 deg C temperatures we experienced!
The kitchen was pretty well equipped with a microwave, washing machine and 4 ring hob plus enough cutlery, crockery and glasses for 4 people. The two sofas in the lounge could have been turned into beds but we were fine sharing a room so didn't test this out. So theoretically the apartment could sleep 4.
The bathroom was a little tatty, especially the shower curtain and the towels, both of which had seen better days. But two boys aren't that bothered about little things like that! Plus the view from the terrace more than made up for this....
There were a couple of other negatives amongst all these positives though. The free wi-fi in the apartment was very patchy. Sometimes it worked and was just about usable. But mostly we either couldn't connect or we could but the internet access was extremely sloooooooooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwww. Jonny ended up going down to the 2nd floor where the internet was much better to download his games and podcasts.
Pep, to his credit, did try and fix the internet but nothing he tried worked. He thought that because the router for floors 3 and 4 was outside and got the 40+ deg C afternoon sun it was overheating. The internet did seem to be better first thing in the morning so perhaps that was the reason.
But I wasn't that bothered because I only had to walk outside to the terrace and take in the magnificent view and I then couldn't care less about the lack of internet!
The other negative was the noise of the entertainment from the Daina. I am not a big fan of most hotel entertainment in PP and generally don't like hearing covers bands murdering songs that I like (and even worse, murdering songs I don't like, which is more common).
Unfortunately the entertainment at the Daina fitted this description perfectly. Inside the apartment with the door to the terrace closed we couldn't hear it but when we sat out on our terrace we could. And obviously we wanted to do this every night as the view was amazing (not sure I've stressed this enough yet!)
It wouldn't be quite so bad but a Peruvian windpipe band most nights played out on the pine walk near us at the same time so we got competing music! I didn't mind the Peruvian music quite as much but when it got mixed in with the covers band it wasn't great to listen to!
Despite this, I still loved this apartment. We felt really at home here and obviously the amazing view certainly helped. I would definitely stay here again and would have no hesitation to recommend it to others. Oh, and because I don't think I have mentioned it enough, the view from the terrace was amazing!
33/52 - The view from our balcony by
SimonButlerPhotography, on Flickr
(to view a larger, full screen version of this photo
click here).
I am going to start a thread in the Photos section that will contain more photos of "that view" plus other photos I took while in PP. So if you're interested, look out for that thread soon....
EDIT: Photo thread is
now here!