Flew out with First choice on the Monday flight from Manchester, left on time and was comfortable with extra leg room. Food was, I thought a bit lower standard than previous meals but it filled a hole.
Arrived in Dabolim a few minutes early and was amazed to get from the aircraft to the taxi in.......20 minutes!!
A quick transfer to the Siver sands in Candolim and was in the room straight away. We had booked a superior room and was pleasantly surprised by the standard and the size of the room. Previously we have stayed at the phoenix park and have been satisfied, so we were a bit doubtfull of the silver sands but have to say we found it superior to the Phoenix in every way. (excepting the pool which we don't use anyway)
And of course it is much nearer the beach!
The staff in particular were very friendly.
I have some pics of the room which I will upload later when I do the hotel report.
As in the past we used Monicas shack most of the time, meeting old friends there but towards the end of the fortnight we switched to Bonos as we got really tried of the struggle up to the shack from the beach where the sand has been washed away.
Bonos must have the best beach toilets in candolim , two for ladies and two for men, all tiled floors with proper toilets and sinks etc.
Also a tiled shower area, all cleaned repeatedly through the day.
Once again we promised ourselves that we wouldn't just sit on the beach for two weeks... once again we did just that
We did notice this year that the Russians did have an effect on our hols, in the past I have had no problems with them but this year we did find them a nuisance in a couple of bars we used.
In particular one night in Calangute when we went to listen to our friend sing at the hotel she entertains at, the computer she uses for backing started to play up, two young Russians went to "help" sort it out and in doing so managed to load it with russian rock music so that they could dance and so they took over the music for the night.(management didn't want to know)
After the various posts on here about tourists being driven away by the visa rules I was amazed at the number of Goa virgins I met, all of whom claim they will be back next year.
The shacks at the bottom end of Candolim beach (river princess area) have banded together and hired security to keep the beach sellers etc away from the shacks which is a bit of a double sided coin as part of the fun is the banter with the sellers even though they can be a pest and there seemd to be fewer sellers on the rest of the beach.
As there have been a few bad delays this year and the weather has been bad in the UK we decided to return to the airport on the bus in case of flight delays etc.... a bad mistake.
the buses may LOOK better now than they used to but believe me they are not! Dirty, smelly, and slow. Never again!!
Anyway, bed calls now, I will do a hotel report in the next day or so.
I still love the place for all of its faults!
