Almare Beach Hotel in Kokkini Khanion

We were dropped off by a transfer bus outside a sign that says shotels almare beach. We walked down a path towards the building but couldn't see a reception area and I had no instructions about what to do so then I had to call a number who then called the hotel and sent someone round to us.

We then had to walk to Shotels Sunset Beach Hotel, which is a short walk down from where we were staying. There is a small (A4 paper size) sign on a box that we walked past saying check-ins need to go to shotels sunset beach, with a small map, but I only noticed this as we were being walked back up the path. I feel this sign needs to be bigger/a lot clearer, and maybe even repeated further down the path.

We got to reception, checked in and then were walked back to our building and room. We were given room no. 10 which has a sea view balcony. The room itself was nice enough, basic but clean. We stayed for 9 nights. There are lots of local stray cats that hang around and follow you.

On night 7 we had a live cockroach in our room. We also had ants. There were lots of dead cockroaches outside the apartment building. Note: I did not complain about this to the hotel directly because we only had two nights left, and in my experience, most hot countries struggle with cockroaches so 🤷‍♀️ (it's not like we were overrun by them). I'm trying to just factually state how our trip and experience of this hotel was.

For breakfast and dinner (and lunch if you've paid for that too) you have to walk round to sunset beach at certain times. I am coeliac and all I can say is, if you are Coeliac or gluten intolerant just don't stay here. No accommodations were made to support my medical food requirements. The food wasn't labelled as whether it contained gluten or not, so I had to ask every day and the answer was always "No, you can't eat it". I had paid for breakfast and dinner and the most I managed to eat was some salad, chips, rice, carrot and broccoli - and this was all on different nights. Breakfast was pretty much the same offering every day and again, I was very limited in what was safe to eat and nothing was labelled. There were not enough serving tongs - not one per food item, so the cross-contamination risk was high. They didn't have any gluten-free bread or a separate toaster. So I ended up having to go to the supermarket and get myself some (which was hard, the supermarkets nearby the most I could find was some bread, a couple of packets of crisps, some alpro and one box of biscuits that were gluten-free - not much choice) and having cheese sandwiches every morning with some orange juice and an alpro I had also purchased at the supermarket.

The hotel is situated directly under the flight path of the airplanes so it is constant and they are noisy, even at night time, which is why the location only has 3 stars. Otherwise it's quite a good location. Plenty of shops and restaurants nearby, good access to lots of different parts of the beach.

Sunsets and sunrises are spectacular at this location.

There are local buses, which are cheap to use, especially if you want to pop into Heraklion. We found them a little unreliable schedule wise, and also sometimes you get a coach, sometimes an actual bus, and they can be quite busy.

There is a taxi app that's advertised at the airport (Freenow) that we ended up using quite a bit because it's easy to use, taxi's were quick to pick us up and this meant we didnt have to hang around for 30-45 mins wondering if the bus was going to show up at any point!. The taxi cost for a trip one way to heraklion from this hotel was around €27 vs the bus which was €2.10 each.

All of the staff were friendly and welcoming at all times - I didn't witness any of them even looking grumpy or having a bad day, so can't fault the service at all.

Very convenient location for travellers without a car - a bus stop is very close to the hotel. The bus is a coach style and very cheap. It was very easy to get to Heraklion, Malia, Heronissos and Agios Nicholas. The weather was not good and we were happy that we could explore towns without renting a car. The staff at the hotel was very friendly and kind. The beds were comfortable and we did not have any complaints about the food.