Чудесный тихий семейный отель Wonderful quiet family hotel

In fact, the hotel is called Petrino and it is located not in Sfakaki, but in Stavromenos, these two villages smoothly flow into each other, separated only by signs on the federal highway. The hotel is small, in the neighbors - Alkina with a zhlobsky owner (or maybe it was the attendants, I don’t know) and the Eleven tavern - knowledgeable people recommend taking only coffee and grilled fish there, we confirm, the rest is so-so, but they found sand in shrimp in general. But an amazingly beautiful waiter! : ) And a beautiful view of the sea from the open terrace. Behind our hotel bordered on the usual such a village house with a manor - there are all sorts of lambs, planting tomatoes, potatoes, and roosters! The bastards yelled at 5 am! But you get used to it quickly, and the window overlooking the backyard can be closed, then nothing will be heard.
The territory is really small - but very clean and a lot of all kinds of flowers, palm trees there, oleanders, orange and lemon trees. I'm not a botanist, I couldn't recognize a lot. Nice and clean, every day Malvina walks around the reception desk soap. The pools are also always the cleanest, only one morning after a strong wind, garbage was brought there, and they removed it only by lunchtime. What I didn't like was that the water in the pools was warmed up a little only on cool days, in the heat it remained too refreshing : ). And it was always colder than the sea...
The place is just wonderful. A bad entry into the sea with stones and sea urchins, which live in abundance in them, is rather a plus than a minus, since it ensures the deserted beach. You feel like a complete hostess there. And right in front of the gate leading from the hotel to the beach, on the last day of our stay, a sea daffodil bloomed : ) We were too lazy to take a picture of it, but the Internet is already full of photos of this fantastic flower. There is a beautiful beach for swimming nearby, though it’s not very easy to get to it - either through the territory of the neighboring hotel Alkina with a zhlobsky owner or service (if you run into it, they won’t let you through), or along the sea along a stone wall (shallow, but stones, and when the sea is rough, the surf beats), or along a slippery stone path along the same wall. Once I got off this path, the bruise has not yet disappeared. But that beach is very good - deserted (in September), golden sand, entry into the sea is very gentle, conditions are almost ideal for children (for complete ideality, there are not enough water slides : )).

Now about the apartments themselves. We got a two-room apartment, not a studio. Purely by the kindness of the owners, because they are designed for a family with two children. However, there were no such rooms in the hotel, and all children's families got into such rooms. The kitchen is large, the bedrooms are not very good, but, by the way, why more? In one bedroom there is a double bed, a large closet with mezzanines, a TV set. the other has two single beds. satellite TV (didn't find out how many channels there, Russian 1), Wi-Fi Internet - free of charge. But the Internet is caught only in our (2) room and at the reception. There is a suspicion that satellite TV is also (a neighbor's boy went to visit us to watch cartoons). They clean the room and change bed linen and towels 2 times a week, very carefully. Of the minuses - there is no bath, and a shower without a curtain - eternal puddles on the floor. Of the minuses of the kitchen - there is no oven and the second burner of the tile is terribly small, under the Turk (there are no Turks, only ladle). Enough crockery, space too. Actually, this is a nice little two-room apartment : ) In the bedrooms, instead of windows, there are sliding glass doors to our small terrace with a table and chairs (wicker with soft pillows). Sea view - right from the bed : ). By the end of the stay (the last days of September - the beginning of October), the hotel was completely deserted. However, before there were almost no people. Yes, we ourselves basically only spent the night there : ). Another nice thing is that the hotel parking lot is enough for all the guests. Even arriving almost at night, they always found a place. Stavromenos is almost in the center of the island - other reviews have already written that Petrino is an ideal base for car travelers. Convenient close access to the highway.
The food is not that scary, it just does not shine with a special variety and local flavor. Quantitatively - more than enough, Malvina carefully monitored this, and replenished the dishes and the coffee pot in time. The menu is quite ordinary - sausage, cheese, butter, olives, chocolate paste, jam, boiled eggs, fruits, tomatoes, cookies, cereal, milk, tea, coffee, juice. Once the milk was diluted, but only once.
In the end, there is the Eleven tavern nearby, a little further there are a bunch of others (I recommend Adrian, 5-10 minutes towards Rethymno, where we were served the most delicious Greek salad of all that we ate in Crete). And they always serve a compliment there (this is not the case everywhere) - grapes, cakes or something else), and supermarkets around. The closest one is across the street. If you go further from it, the gas station will be bigger and cheaper (there is still brandy on tap). A little further away there is a small shop, somehow connected with the cats of Crete (whether it is charitable, or something else, I did not understand). I bought a nice little summer bag there for 1 euro : ) There was also a whole rack of all sorts of simple summer clothes for the same price.
There was a fish shop very close to our hotel, it sold fresh sea fish. The fresher, the more expensive. The sellers gutted it themselves right about me (already after the purchase).