Side, Melissa Gardens Review

Overall Rating

Clean, large apartments in hotel setting with pool, bar, excellent staff and great food

Not on the beach

We were near the last to be dropped off the coach and had dropped other people off at several wonderful looking 5 star hotels along the way so were very dissappointed when we saw Melissa Gardens as there was no frontage, just a sign above a passage with shops either side. The reception was also nothing to write home about but we were greeted well into the morning on our arrival by the manager, Charlie who offered us a free drink on him and what the Melissa Gardens lacked in lavish looks it more than made up for in it's friendliness, great atmosphere, the apartment size, modern interior and cleanliness, in fact, it was far better than we expected for a Turkish 3 star hotel. We thought we would have just one bedroom with a shower off it but the Melissa Gardens are full apartments with 2 double bedrooms, a large modern kitchen and living room, bathroom with shower, 2 balconies (one overlooking the pool) and a large hallway.

The swimming pool by the bar/restaurant was kept very clean and was lit each evening as you wined and dined. The staff were excellent and made our holiday extra special (which none of the 5 star hotels did for their guests as we found out when everyone was picked up at the end of their holiday). Our hotel head chef Erhan really looked after us with his specials and when we told him we had been disapointed by a meal we had from a pre holiday recommendation off the web he cooked us his version of the same meal for half the price and filletted it and served it at our table whilst entertaining us by dancing to the music with his waiters around our table. The waiters danced with us and taught us Turkish each night and Erhan gave us a Turkish coffee on the house.

Although the Melissa Gardens was not on the beach like the 5 star hotels it was only a short walk (across a somewhat busy road however) down a footpath between the hotels which we enjoyed. I would also recommend Inland Touristic and Benny Hill who was situated near the Melissa Gardens for all your tours as he was very, very helpful and kind, we never passed by without his inviting us in for a chat and lemon tea on the house even though we had already bought all our tours for the holiday. He was half the price of those sold by the Thomas Cook rep and although the rep had told us not to use outside tours because they didn't have English speaking guides and were not as good we found this untrue and in fact those who booked the Turkish bath with the TC rep had to pay a lot extra for a massage after the Turkish bath when ours was included even though we paid half what they did.

As with most of the hotels the Melissa Gardens was out of Side town itself but we loved the walk along the beach front into Side and back so did not use transportation except one day when we visited the ruins and the dolmus (bus) took us right to our hotel door.

We do not holiday to the same place twice but if we did we would definitely go back to the Melissa Gardens.