Maria Complex

I've just returned from a holiday with my teenage neice & nephew in Sissi and it was perfect! Sissi is a small, well balanced resort that maintains its Cretan atmosphere and charm whilst offering a wide selection of restaurants, bars and entertainment. Particularly good fun and value was the Mini Golf - not usually 'my thing' - which offered a range of other games as well. The beaches were a fair hike away - approx. 15 - 25 mins walk (depending on where you went) it's a pleasant walk and the 6 euros to use the sun-loungers was OK if you're going to be there a while. We stayed at the Maria Hotel Apartments, a small, family-run complex. The family were very friendly, welcoming and generally helpful. Maria is particularly exuberant and seems to have a genuine desire that their guests have a good time. The accomodation was typically Greek, clean and functional. Cooking facilities & utensils were limited but I was able to cook a vegetarian and non-vegetarian meal most nights. Eating out was a little more expensive than I had anticipated. The swimming pool was a good size for the complex, clean and well maintained. The pool bar was open approx. 18 hrs/day serving reasonably priced snacks. How lively depended on the guests at the time. Best of all was BBQ night. Extremely good value at 10 euros per person for all you can eat & Greek dancing etc. They will prepare a vegetarian alternative, if you let them know in advance, in addition to the variety of salads on offer. All in all, the mark of a good holiday is would you return. In our case the answer is a resounding YES.

Got home on Wednesday from a week at Maria Apartments/Hotel, Sissi. Had a wonderful holiday and have to say that, despite some of the other reviews, we were happy with Maria Hotel. This is Greece we're talking about, and you get what you pay for (booked a week before we went, with Jet2, at a bargain price). Maria Hotel was attractive, clean and the family were friendly - Maria and Yiannis (eldest son) were always around and knew what was happening at all times. We had Room 1 in the "Hotel Reception" block, which was infront of the Billiards tables BUT, whilst we only had a partial view of the pool and the bar, we also had a bit of privacy cos we weren''t in full view of everyone at the bar and pool. We could sit out on our patio and not feel we were being "people watched". The only evening someone played the Billiards tables rightoutside our room we closed the patio door and the double-glazing was so good we could hardly hear them. The cockrels crowed every morning but we couldn't hear them till we opened the patio doors - we had no problems sleeping. The room and bathroom were clean, adequate (how long do you spend in your room on holiday!) We've never had a shower curtain or screen in Greece so this is not a problem for us. Admittedly there was a shortage of toilet paper but we found once the roll was empty (i.e. down to the cardboard roll!) It was replaced next day - (keep a supply of kitchen roll handy!) The pool was good and cleaned every night, and plenty of loungers to go round, maybe the hotel wasn't full cos we were able to choose how close or distant we were from our neigbours. The bar was friendly, never too full or noisy - except for BBQ night which was excellent value for 10E each. Great Souvlaki, Pork chops, salads and dips, dancing and music - one of the best I've been to. Location of Maria's is great, just far enough out of the village to make you feel you're in the country (10 min walk from Harbour at the most). Great Taverna (Lofitos) just up the road. Will definitely go back to Maria's.

Have just returned from a weeks trip to Sissi, Crete on a last minute holiday booking. Overall the service from the family who run Maria Apartments was poor with a real unfriendliness coming across from several. The room was basic with poor facilities for a self catering apartment and no shower curtain making the bathroom look like a poor mans 'wet room' a feature made worse by the smelling drain in the bathroom. We were fortunate to overlook the pool which was a well kept small pool with plenty of loungers - a definite positive. As was the tidying of the room on a daily basis albeit there was no changing of sheets, towels and replacing of toilet rolls. The biggest issue with Maria Apartments were the hidden costs. Air Con - 42 Euros for the week!! Room safe 15 Euros for the week!! The best thing about Maria Apts was the location as it was just down the street from Sissi which if you are looking to get away from it all is an excellent place for restaurants, bars (Hemmingways is particularly excellent) and an amazing hotel beach which you are allowed on if you walk across the rocks to it from Boufoss beach. I wouldnt reccomend Maria as it was unfriendly and surprisingly expensive.

Just back from a week's break. Sissi is a great little, quiet village and although we would both go back to the hotel and village, there are things people should be aware of. Rooms in the hotel are adequate but very small, the pictures on the website mariahotel.gr are family rooms. Also do be aware that the website only shows the new hotel block - a smaller and older block exists nearer the road but we dont know what that was like. The pool is deceptively small, very nice for a cooling dip but useless for swimming (5x10m with a very shallow end). Air Con is 6e per day and for night time it is a necessity. Quite a lot of outside noise, there is a building site 50m inland but to be fair it only seemed vaguely noisy between 7 and 9am. There is also alot of internal hotel noise but you do get used to it. The hotel is on the main road into Sissi so there is quite a lot of traffic noise during the day and early evening. The orchard over the road contains lots of crickets which do make a constant and sometimes quite loud noise. Beds are a bit uncomfortable so do ask for extra blankets as this makes it more so. Staff are accomodating and friendly and although we didnt go, the greek night seemed really good fun. Apartments are cleaned every day except Sunday, new linen and towels twice in a week. Showers werent great. No water pressure, really hot in the day and no chance of a hot shower after sun-down (due to solar heating) Not suited to disabled persons as no lift. The nearest shop is 250m away, main village 350m, harbour about 400m and beach 600-700m. If you print vouchers out, take 2 copies otherwise they wont honour breakfast arrangements and on the subject, breakfast is tea, orange juice and 2 slices of toast with butter and jam. No alternative and a full English is available but it will cost you. No WiFi but a computer is in the reception if you need to get internet. Overall the hotel does have a great feel to it, other holidaymakers were all really relaxed and very friendly which did add to the holiday experience. Do read reviews for Sissi, everyone says its a fantastic little gem and we thoroughly agree, more expensive than other greek resorts we've been to but very friendly and pretty.

The Sissi Maria Apartments it's the worst hotel which I've ever seen! It is located near to the street so it is very noisy because of the traffics, cascades and cocks. Even if you have a closed windows you can hear everything because of holes between the wall and frame. So if you want to get some sleep you will not be able to get it in Maria Apartments. The bathroom was small and not very tidy, smell coming out from the pipes was horrible, there was no toilet paper. Every day the same breakfast (English breakfast? ha ha ha) - 2 toasts, jam, butter, juice and caffe or tea. If you want use air-condition you have to pay additionally 6 euros per night, for internet they are charging 4 euros per hour. I can understand that everybody wants to earn some money, but if I'm going for holiday to Ukraine for example, during a winter, I don't have to pay 6 euros per night for central heating! I would strongly NOT recommend this Hotel! Crete - YES, Sissi Maria Apartments - definitely NO!

We stayed for two weeks at Maria's (also known as Maria's apartments and Maria Hotel). We booked last minute and it was cheap so wasn't expecting much. It was sold as a three star hotel- but the room we stayed in definitely wasn't but I think their rooms vary and people who pay more get put in the main block which seemed nicer and is further away from road. You can see the places pictures on their website but i would think these pictures date from when it was built as it seems run down now. We were met when we arrived and given single key, shown to room and then left, we weren't given any more information unless we asked the entire stay. We had paid for B&B there was a breakfast menu with cooked breakfasts and I asked for beans on toast and was charged for it. The included breakfast is cup of tea/instant coffee, a glass of concentrated orange juice and two slices of toast and a bit of jam and butter at the pool bar. Anything else you have to pay for but they didn't explain this. Prices were 4euros for milkshake, 5 euros for small cocktail. The room was dirty when we arrived and wasn't cleaned in the whole two weeks and the sheets weren't changed. Towels were changed once but they were very tatty with holes in. We took our rubbish down to the bins as in that heat it started to smell. Toilet paper was available if you asked for it. Air con was 84 euros and the room safe quite a bit too. We were supposed to have an apartment but our room was very cramped and had a fridge and a kettle and a couple of plates and cups and you use bathroom sink to wash up in. I would be very careful if you have children as the mixer attachment you shower with doesn't mix very well and the floors were slippery as no shower curtain. Also we tried to plug something in and the electric socket fell apart. Our room overlooked the main road into Sissi and was noisy through the night, there were no shutters or flyscreens, just badly fitting glass doors and only one curtain which barely covered the window. I paid to stay somewhere else for a night as was tired of not sleeping at Marias due to noise from pool bar and road (even using earplugs), which was bliss as although basic the owner was so friendly and it was clean. The hotel has a pool, sunbeds and billiards table (we asked to use one evening and were told we couldn't as it might disturb guests in the main block when we had been kept up every night by the noise from football and loud guests). Sunbeds were very close together and very close to pool, so you got splashed when people jumped in and sun parasols are completely fixed so not much shade. Most info seemed to mention activities but there was only a Karoke when we were there and football on TV some nights. We found the family running it very unfriendly and unhelpful, we were due to recieve information on our transfer by fax to the hotel but ended up making our own way to airport as they said they hadn't received anything and were going to charge 40 euros to have the room a bit longer. Sissi was a nice small place, some restaurants and tacky tourist shops and car hire and places to book trips. We hired a car and am very glad we did as would have been bored otherwise. Crete itself was interesting place and there are so many other good places to stay I really regret choosing Marias. I would never go back to Marias, we went for a relaxing break and although it didn't spoil the holiday as we used to car a lot and tried not to spend much time there, the lack of sleep and other problems weren't much fun. I think Olympic have stopped using this place and I can see why, there was a sign outside the whole time saying rent rooms and there is a reason it wasn't full.

OVERVIEW Booked the Maria as a late deal through Travel Republic about two weeks before departure. Very cheap, paid about £170 for two weeks in a self-catering room, so we weren't really expecting much, to be honest. The Maria is located on the main road into Sissi, although it's really not that busy but you do get some road noise at night. It's some distance from the main harbour area, which is where most of the restaurants, bars and shops are situated - I would say approx. 20 mins walk, given the heat. The local (pebbly) beaches are slightly further, and the sandy beach at Kalimera Kriti is more like 40 mins walk. The pool bar has a TV screen, where they show English football matches, films and comedy. They also do snacks and English breakfasts, which seemed very popular although we didn't try them. In summary, the Maria is cheap and an adequate place to base yourself, and it seemed to suit people who like to sit around the pool all day, with access to a bar, TV and cooked breakfasts. Most guests were English, many middle aged, mostly couples, and seemed reasonably happy with the accommodation. OUR EXPERIENCE On arrival, we were greeted by Maria and directed to our first-floor room, which overlooked the pool area. Seemed fine, quite small but adequate; small balcony with table and chairs, small 'kitchenette' (two rings, fridge, sink, basic crockery/cutlery etc) twin beds and shower room. The pool is small and the rooms/apartments are rather crowded around it, with balconies overlooking it and a bar/lounge area right next to it. We had to keep the curtains closed when getting showered, changed etc as others can see into the room from their rooms/balconies. As others have commented, the sun loungers around the pool are very close together; however, we don't really spend time around the pool anyway, preferring to travel around and visit the beach, so this wasn't a big deal for us. More problematic was that the pool bar could get quite noisy at night. On one night in particular, it seemed some people were awaiting a very late/early morning flight and spent the evening in the bar, but because the rooms are so close to the pool area, this meant their shouting and laughing kept me awake until after 3am - not appreciated! This would not be a problem if you kept the balcony doors and windows closed; however, it was so hot you could not sleep and the price of the air con was outrageous. Still, it's up to you to choose the lesser of the two evils, I suppose. It's worth noting that the local cockerels and dogs are rather noisy too, at random times throughout the night, not just at dawn. When heading out on our first morning, we were stopped by Yiannis in the lobby, saying that we had to change rooms. He showed us to a ground floor room, saying we'd been given the wrong room on arrival and that we had to move to this one. The 'balcony' was actually at ground floor level, right next to two pool tables, and with no view at all. Needless to say I was not too happy with this and said that we didn't want to move rooms, especially as we'd unpacked all our stuff and would have to spend quite some time re-packing and unpacking again. Yiannis then got rather unpleasant, complaining that we were causing him a problem! We explained that we were not willing to move immediately as we were about to go out for the day and would discuss it later, but Maria then chased after us, again asking why we were causing a problem. To cut a long story short, we did eventually move rooms, but to a different (first floor) room, though we remained mystified as to why we needed to move at all. There was no adequate explanation of why they couldn't simply swap the guests who were due in our room into the one we should have been in. This incident did rather sour our relationship with both Yiannis and Maria, who seemed rather miserable and more interested in their own convenience than in the comfort of their guests. I wouldn't say that customer service was their strong point. The cleaning was also somewhat inadequate; bins were emptied regularly, but the sheets were never changed through our whole stay (14 nights) and there was no evidence of the floor being swept, which resulted in a large amount of sand, hair and other dirt building up during the fortnight. Sissi itself is nice enough, and has all the necessary facilities, but you really need a car to enjoy a holiday here. We booked a small car (Toyota Aygo) for the whole two weeks through www.rental-center-crete.com for €275 everything included - they were brilliant, whole thing went very smoothly, including pick up and return to airport. Best beach was the one near Malia Palace (the Minoan site just along the coast) - sandy, sheltered, not too crowded. The beach at Kalimera Kriti was nice, although there was some beach tar (oil) on it, which rather spoiled it. Best place to eat was Liofito - turn left out of Maria (i.e. away from the harbour) and it's about 300 metres away on the right. Fantastic Cretan food, including many ingredients produced by the owners; olive oil from their trees, cheese from their goats, rabbit from their farm and home-grown vegetables. Very friendly service and reasonable prices. Best place to drink (and play pool) was the Calypso, run by English couple Stuart and Marie. Good cocktails, decent cooked breakfast and really nice people. (They're planning to change the name next year, so look out for the bar set back from the road, halfway down to the harbour). Hemingway's also seemed nice, with a good location overlooking the harbour, but pricier and poncier! All in all, Sissi was a much nicer place to stay than the bigger resorts in this part of Crete, the weather was good and we had a relaxing holiday, but we're unlikely to return, and especially not to the Maria.

just come back from a week in sissi crete, what a beaut of a little fishing port, stayed at the Maria hotel just outside the main square, it was fab very clean great little pool the family who run it were so helpful, yannis and his mum were great many thx,the locals are so welcoming, brill spot if you want a knees up malia in next door, spot on place

Having read reviews on the Maria Hotel in Sissi in Crete I was worried as we picked this holiday as a last minute alternative holiday when our first choice fell through. Happily we found it to be very clean and tidy and good value. The staff were very helpful - but the sun beds are very close together and the sun shades offer little shade (it was 35 degrees) as they are fixed and cannot be tilted or moved. The hotel is fine and we our a family of four and got two adjacent rooms, oone with a pool view and one with a lovely mountain views/olive groves and chickens. The only loud night was once in the week they had a BBQ with music. We walked down to Boufos Beach which was lovely, had a cafe and drinks bar and loungers & shades etc. The happy train round the village was a lovely ride and lasts an hour and the harbour area has a lot of sea view resturants.

We booked a late availability holiday with last minute.com. We booked on the Thursday and flew out the following Tuesday. We flew with Nordic airways from Stansted, whom we had never heard of, but were very good. Flight left on time, was an hour shorter than expected and got allocated very good seats with extra legroom. No inflight entertainment though. We were booked to stay in Malia at the Newcastle Apartments, great if you are under 21, noisy late night teenagers! We asked to be moved and paid an extra 194 euros, to upgrade and move areas. We ended up at the Maria complex and our first impression was at least it is more couple / family orientated. Unfortunately, the pool was quite small, although clean & the sunbeds, were jammed so close together, there was not an inch of room between them! You had to dive onto the bed to access it! Not great if you want a bit of space. The next bit is an excerpt from the complaint sent to Olympic holidays. 1. The doors in the Apartments were difficult to close, thus resulting in much squeaking and banging of doors late at night. 2. No toilet rolls provided. This is found incredulous! What did they expect us to do? It doesn’t bear thinking about! Admittedly there was loo roll upon first arrival, but once that had run out, it was buy your own or use your hand! 3. Holes in the bathroom door front & rear – photos provided. 4. Fridge was absolutely disgusting and should be condemned. Horrible green type fungus looking stuff at bottom of fridge. Can only assume so old, coolant leaking?! The alternative makes me feel too ill to think about. Fridge filthy upon arrival. Not cleaned. See photos. 5. Paid 76 euros for 13 night’s air conditioning, which was great, but leaked all over the balcony. The outlet hose should have gone done the side of the building, but instead pooled on the balcony, depositing about an inch of water each day, which never dried out and stained. I cannot count how many times my towels and clothes feel into this, whilst attempting to dry them on the balcony. Eventually I resorted to putting out a 2 litre water bottle each day to catch this waste; this had to be emptied several times each day. 6. Shelf in bathroom held up with cardboard, shower tray cracked, had to hold shower spray in hand, no hook for it on wall. Try washing YOUR hair holding shower head in one hand and shampoo in other! No shower curtain, so bathroom flooded including loo. 7. Fire extinguisher used to prop open landing door! H&S! 8. Maid – Ha ha. Did not empty bathroom bin daily, stains on floor never moped, entered room without knocking! The utensils and crockery in the room were absolutely filthy when we arrived; brown tea stains in cups, dried food on plates etc. 9. Recently painted room??!! Painted over light sockets, safe, plug sockets etc. 10. Self catering???????? How do you cater for one self, with only 2 hob rings? No toaster, no Kettle? 11. Although plenty of pool beds, jammed so close together, you had to dive on them to access- no leg room between! Sissi itself was quite a nice village, although the buses only run twice a day in summer, so unless you hire a car, you are stranded! Jolly Roger pub was great with Friday night Quizzes. Nice place to eat was Anapoli, on same road as Jolly roger. The beach area by the Harbour was where we ended up spending every day, it was just too much hassle round by the pool, I like a bit of personal space. Its bad enough being confronted by my own stretch marks, but I don't want to see my neighbours! If going to Sissi the Palm bay hotel looked very nice, we used to pass this on the way to the beach or the Castellano.