Hotel Picks

Greece

Ethrion, Syros town, Syros

Ethrion must rate as one of the friendliest places we stayed in Greece. The owner, George, is a dentist but he is also a wonderfully friendly hotel-keeper. His modern rooms with big balconies lovely bathrooms, refrigerator, and most importantly heat cost only $30 off season and if all that isn't enough, he gave us free internet and invited us to a slap-up barbeque lunch when we asked a question about Greek food. In return, Gerry helped him to fix up his website and to find out and teach him how to upload changes to the website's server.

Oniro, Naxos town, Naxos

This family-run hotel above St George's beach in Naxos town is great value for money. The rooms on the upper floor have small balconies with distant seaviews, kitchenettes, clean comfortable rooms, and best of all satellite TV in about a dozen languages with several hundred channels to choose from. Rooms are all air-conditioned in summer and heated in winter. In the off season we paid 25 euros. What a bargain!

Costa Rica

Club de Arenal, Lago de Arenal

We rented a fantastic 3-bedroom condo overlooking Lake Arenal for just a week in April of 2004 for the princely sum of 40 dollars a night. Afterwards we wished we had spent a month there. The condo development had a nice covered swimming pool which added to the pleasure of being there but nothing really exceeds the value of the view. We saw the Lake in the rainy season when every five minutes the colors would change and winds would drive clouds and rain across the water. Oh, and of course we had humming birds right outside our windows every day.

Sunset View Hotel, Santa Elena

This German-run hotel has small, simple rooms but they all have attached bathroom and all open onto a terrace that has to-die-for views over a pretty garden all the way down to the gulf of Nicosia? As the name suggests, it faces west and so indeed offers the nightly spectacle of a glowing sunset. If that weren't enough, then consider the excellent breakfast served by the German host. Dinner can also be had at a reasonable price. We paid around US$35 for a double in April 2004.

Panama

Bahia de Salinas

We spent a week at this resort hotel on the Bahia de Salinas just after Easter 2004. The hotel was empty except for us and so we had their lovely pool all to ourselves and managed to negotiate half board (breakfast, lunch, and room) for US$50 per day.

Ukraine

Hotel George, Lviv

Right on the main square of this lovely town, the St. George Hotel was slowly converting its enormous rooms sans bathrooms to all-ensuite rooms. Luckily for us they still had one or two floors to go and we got a very big room on the third floor and used the toilets and showers across the hall. We thought this a terrific deal at about US$30 for a double including the best breakfast we had in eastern Europe. Service was white-gloved and breakfast was a three-course meal including such delightful Ukrainian specialites as blintzes (crepes with sour cream and jam).

Sergei's apartments

We found Sergei via the internet. He specializes in bringing together foreign tourists and Kievan apartment owners to the benefit of all three. For us he found a small apartment just off Independence Square in downtown Kiev for a reasonable $40 a night. Very young at 24, he seemed honest and hard-working but of course we can make no guarantees.