Short;
Good: The views, the location, the staff.
Bad: The steps, the food, the rooms.

Long;
The hotel is situated on the side of a hill and is not for the faint-hearted, if you don

My husband and I have recently returned from a week

The hotel is located on a very steep slope about a 15 minute walk from Elounda. There are loads of steps everywhere (inside the main building & out)so you need to be physically fit and able. The area is very quiet so if you are wanting tranquility you'll get it here.

The bar and pool areas are well designed with plenty of sun loungers available at the time we visited.The pool is unheated and for most people too cold to swim in for more than 5 or 10 minutes. The bar had a happy hour and a cretian night and the staff are really friendly & helpful.

Breakfast & dinner was buffet style and there was plenty of fresh fruit and salads available.

The rooms are somewhat basic, certainly not what I expecting of a 4 star hotel. The beds were unforgiving, some rooms just have a concrete floor (not even tiled) and the bathroom was disappointing. They do have a fridge and are air conditioned and the view from the room was fantastic, looking across the bay towards Spinalonga island.

The journey to the Hotel from Herakion Airport is about an hour to an hour and a half.
The Hotel is a series of varying size apartments set on a rather steep hillside. (If you get a room number above 200 then take your hiking boots, cramp-ons and spare rope - alternatively hire a car just to get you up the hill)!
We arrived at 2am and the guy at check in helped us with our bags to our room (116- phew).

The Hotel itself is very clean and well looked after and the staff are always willing to help.

The Hotel is visited by couples and families although there is not much to entertain the kids other than the pool, a table tennis table and a snooker table.
Fortunately, there is not much to entertain the slightly older 'children' either that you will doubtless travel over with on the plane - don't worry they are heading for Malia.

There is a small mini-mart/shop linked to the Hotel where you can get basic provisions (bottled water/sun lotion/papers etc) from 0830 to 1630 during the week and a bit later at the weekends. The lady that runs the shop is from Finland and is very pleasant.
The pool is salt water and impossible to sink in. (The new floor around the pool is very slippery).

There is a small 'beach' at the bottom of the drive to the Hotel which costs a couple of Euros for the day to hire the sunbeds and umbrellas.
The view from the Hotel into Elounda Bay is spectacular.

Breakfast in the restaurant is mainly fruit, toast, cheese etc - typical European. Don't expect eggs, bacon, sausages etc every day!
Evening meals are pretty good - lots of salads (Greek of course) and varying pork/fish dishes. The restaurant seems to be run by a guy called Manolis - nice guy.

Entertainment in the Hotel is limited - you will have one evening of visiting Cretan dancers and a Sunday visit from 'Theo Spartakus' (He will start with a cover version of Eric Claptons' Wonderful Tonight' which builds expectations and it will go downhill from there! (I guess you'll have to watch him once).
The bar is run by Nikos, who is a nice guy too(sic), unless you are an attractive woman and he takes a shine to you!!!

We hired a car for a couple of days (120 Euros) from the Hotel lobby (you can get it cheaper in town) and explored the NW mountains and onwards to Vai. This is about a two hour drive and you end up at a small picturesque, but rather commercialised beach where you have to pay for parking, toilets, sunbeds etc. It is apparently the only beach on the island with palm trees.

We also travelled south to Ierapetra and found some delightful small bays along the southern coast.
The walk into Elounda town takes about 20 mins along the coast road. It's an easy flat and pleasant walk in the evening although not well lit on the way back in the dark.

The town is a very typical Cretan harbour town - small fishing boats only.

You can get boat trips to the island of Spinalonga (an old leper colony in the middle of the bay), we didn't bother!

You can also arrange trips via the rep who visits the Hotel once or twice a week - for instance you could go to Santorini - if you are willing to get up about 4am, catch a coach to Agios Nikolios (15 mins) then come back past where you started to Heraklion, catch the cruise ship (with about 300 others - few of which will be British), spend 4 hours at sea, arrive at the beautiful island, get on a donkey to go up the steep hill, stay for two or three hours and then do all the above in reverse, arriving back at the Hotel about 11pm. We bought a postcard instead!

I really couldn't fault the whole place really and can recommend it if your intention is to get away from it all in extremely pleasant surroundings.

If you have any questions about anything specific, please drop a line here and I would be glad to help if I can.

Happy days.
Simon