Aristoteles Studios

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Fourka (Fourkas), Halkidiki
We went to Fourka for two weeks in September 2005. When we arrived the whole country looked green which surprised us, as most places in Greece in September are burnt. This place obviously has more rain than they let on, which we found out. We had 5 days of rain in the two weeks we were there.
Regarding Fourka the little village, in itself not too bad. It is very quiet. No crowds. However most of the area seems to have been developed 20 to 30 years ago and is getting very tired. You can walk from one end to the other in 20 minutes. There are hardly any souvenir shops. So not much to do when the weather is poor! There is nothing for youngsters at all, unless they are young enough to be happy on the beach, if weather permits. Enough supermarkets to survive, but beware if you like a cuppa, take your own tea bags. Greeks, don’t drink much tea so the supermarkets don’t sell much and what they do is rubbish.
The beaches are not too bad, good sand, some pebbles in the sea. However beware of urchins in the sea. I had urchin spikes in my toes. There are a few beach bars right by the village, one by the Australian Hotel.
There are plenty of places to eat. Giovanni’s was very friendly, good food but a little expensive. Other places gave you free soup and sweets. We found the best place to eat was the Australian hotel in the seafront restaurant. Not too much choice but the food was good and cooked nice, and it was the cheapest locally. Barbecue lamb was very good.
We have covered most of the popular islands and always found the local Greek people very friendly. Surprisingly we did not find this here. What we also found is that local Greek youths are now cruising the streets in cars, music blaring and my wife did feel somewhat threatened for the first time ever in Greece.
My advice would be not to go to Halkidiki, early or late season. It is too far north.
We shall not be returning to this area again.
Hotel Aristoteles
If you are thinking of staying here don’t. Like the area it is now past its sell by date and needs lots of money spending on it. The reception staff are not friendly at all. In fact they were rather sharp on occasions.
What the brochure does not show is the location of the bar to the rooms. The apartments are U shaped and the bar is at the one end. This does mean if there are people having lots of fun and well oiled, you will not get to sleep unless you take ear plugs. We were opposite the bar and the first week it was a real nuisance. The food they served up here also left a lot to be desired.
When we arrived the room had been cleaned (and the two cleaners appeared to be working hard all day). However the cleaners don’t have any cleaning fluids. The smell from the toilet was not very nice so the first thing we did was to buy a bottle of thick bleach and clean the toilet. When we left the smell was much better but one would have expected the toilets to have seen some bleach over the last twenty years or so.
The furniture was damaged. The Bottom drawer of the wardrobe had the bottom dropping out. The beds were as old as the apartments. The bathroom shelf had been broken and never replaced. The shower gulley had the grill missing. The external sliding glass to the windows by the front door had fallen out and never been replaced. The kitchen sink smelt awful and bleach made no difference. While we were there the lights kept fusing. In fact the one light bulb exploded one morning, which woke me up!
The drains from the flat above ran in the walls so every time someone used the sink in the flat above you hear the water running down the pipe by the sink.
The fridge badly needed defrosting as the ice had almost met in the freezer compartment. This made it very noisy as it was doing overtime to stay cool.
Beware of night arrivals waking you. It seemed that both the Thomson’s Reps and the arrivals made all the noise they could in the middle of the night, which seemed to reverberate around the building and paths.
Watch the Thomson’s Reps. We hired a car through them and had it for three days. Afterwards we found others who had also paid for three days but had the car for four days. Make sure you ask what offers they have on.
I would strongly suggest that you do not use this hotel. I would also add that the other hotels in this area didn’t look a lot better. So beware of the whole area!