Aguamar Apartamentos, Los Cristianos Downtown

This hotel is very basic. The pool area is crammed with sunbeds all very close together. The pool is ice cold, although supposed to be heated. Because of the shape of the hotel, noise around the pool area echos and becomes very loud, with parents shouting their kids and kids screaming. The sun starts to go off the pool area from mid afternoon. People reserve sunbeds from 10am every day, and sometimes don’t appear till late afternoon. The rooms are very basic, with old fashioned kitchen appliances. They provide you with a coffee machine and a toaster, but nowhere in the kitchen area to plug them in . Travelling solo, I was given the worst room, on the end, overlooking a building site.. You have to pay for WIFI per device €15 for 3 days. They charge for sunbed cushions and parasols, scandalous! I didn’t try the food as I went self catering. I would not stay here again. Location - it’s a bit of a scruffy area around the hotel.. I went to a lovely pool area at the Tenerife Sur apartments on a daily basis, lovely quiet pool area as you can just walk in .

First impression of the hotel is quite modern. They made an effort to decorate up for Christmas. The reception area looked very modern with weird chairs, like Alice in Wonderland. The reception staff were nice and we were checked in promptly. Room 432. This room overlooked the road and was very quiet, which we liked. The room was dated but very clean. A bit disappointed at 2 single beds pushed together when we had booked a double room. Surprisingly the room had no safety deposit box or aircon, which, over the years of going abroad was very unusual but seeing as it was only 3 days and December we didnt mind so much but I wouldnt think the ceiling fan would cool down the room in Mid Summer. Loved how the little attention to detail the room was cleaned and prepared for us. The beds blankets were just turned down on the edge and the toilet roll ends had been folded nicely. Just the little touches that made me notice. The room was cleaned every day and swept out. The cleaners were very hard working and polite. It was nice to have a few English channels on the TV to watch. BBC and ITV. On the first day we went down to the pool bar. I fancied a coffee and was delighted to see a professional looking coffee machine and asked the bar tender for a white coffee, he said something I didnt quite catch so I said 'a Latte or Cappuccino please'. He replied by 'you need to ask me what you want in English not Italian as Im Spanish and Latte to me just means milk' I was quite taken aback by this as Ive rightly or wrongly assumed most people would understand that asking for a Latte would mean a milky coffee. Here in England, in 90% of coffee shops we order this way. I thought 'My mistake, so I said 'A milky coffee, not too strong' and just put it down to a cultural thing. I was surprised to see the next morning in the dining room that the coffee machine for the buffet breakfast had a list of 'Italian' named coffees, Latte, Cappuccino etc on the options so in my mind 'Was he being grumpy with me?' This put me off visiting the poor bar for the rest of my stay. As regards the food, honestly, at a push just go for bed and breakfast. If you have kids, dont go for the half board option. Theres not much choice at all and hardly anything for a fussy eater. Evening meal starts at 7pm. We turned up on the first night at 7.05pm. There was 3 chicken nuggets left and a few chips. We just walked out and paid for a meal out. Theres loads of places around the hotel where you can get reasonable priced food. I was really disappointed with the food, we only eate there on the last night, to just try it. It was very average and wished we hadnt bothered going half board. The dining room is really small for the size of the hotel but I dont know if they extend the tables and chairs to outside in the Summer period. The hotel is perfectly positioned and is only a 10 minute walk to the sea front. It is up hill slightly on the return but this didnt bother us. To sum up, this is a budge

Absolutely beautiful hotel! Extremely friendly staff, relaxing pool and bar area. Apartment was lovely, got everything you need and very clean. Can't fault our stay one bit, it was great. Good location close to bars, takeaways and shops but not a loud environment so didn't disrupt sleep at all! Only 10-15 mins walk to the beach, so close enough for the night life but also far enough away for that quiet chilled vibe. Would definitely go again!