This is a bit of a post-script to my holiday report about Archondiko Angelou, which was heavenly.

After we left Leros, we had a six hour wait in Kos before our flight back to London, and I didn’t want to be sitting on a beach with no showers and a couple of large suitcases to watch over, so we arranged for a day rate at a hotel resort in Kardamena.  I won’t name names but… let’s just say, it’s a large company very popular with British holidaymakers.

Here’s the thing, everything was fine.  The food was edible, the pool was large and probably clean, the guests wore colour-coordinating outfits and the staff were friendly with name badges in case they weren’t friendly and you needed to report them.  (I doubt it was the kind of place where they ever received tips, nice as they were).

BUT! It was the longest six hours I have ever spent.  All the mums and dads (yes, it was a family resort) looked stressed, their faces pinched with fatigue from having to cajole toddlers into eating the pasta instead of the chips, from pleading with their kids to get out of the pool, or coping with the whatever-faces of their teenager offspring.

It was the hotel of the pointless path; the terrace filled with tables and chairs but no umbrellas; the bar by the pool that looked like a garage in the suburbs of Southampton.

It was one of those places where you pay for everything up front so that all you need to pay for is drinks and ice cream.  As a result they skimp on the extras.  I asked where I could get changed for a swim and the lifeguard shrugged his shoulders, “I don’t know.”   “What about towels?”  ”Ask at reception”.  Eventually I changed in the “Trattoria”, an Italian-themed (ARGH!) restaurant which reminded me of a Cuban holiday camp for Chernobyl-fallout victims (I say this with some authority because I have actually visited a Cuban holiday camp for Chernobyl-fallout victims and thinking about it, it was nicer.  It may have been crumbling and dilapidated but at least the architecture was beautiful).

Within 30 minutes there, I felt so depressed, all I wanted to do was eat chips and ice-cream.

What depressed me was that this place wasn’t cheap.  Yet it felt like a cynical exercise - a resort dumped in a part of Greece that no Greek would holiday in because they’re not stupid enough.

Under a flight path.

I felt angry for all these hard-working, money-saving guests at the hotel who were being duped into thinking that this was easier than taking a hydrofoil for 90 minutes and checking in to the heavenly little hotel I’d just been staying at, Archondiko Angelou.  Because you don’t need a pool, or a kid’s club, or Magnum-a-like ice creams or a lifeguard in orange shorts, or an Italian themed restaurant.

Needless to say, the kids loved it…