Guest User
March 6, 2024
Our room was spacious, airy and air conditioned, with doors opening to a large front patio, seating area and lawn to sea, shaded by palms, with sun loungers. It was also the end-most room so no-one needed to walk past to get to their room (not that were many people staying anyway!) but it was still only one minute walk from the central/bar/dining building. There was a huge (semi-covered) outdoor bathroom / courtyard, with a big freestanding bathtub and separate shower. The thorough and diligent housekeeping and maintenance team keep all rooms, outside spaces and pool absolutely immaculate. Regrettably you can't swim directly in front of the hotel as the beach shelves steeply with strong currents, however you can scramble over some rocks and head 500 metres or so westwards where there is a tiny beach cafe and a safer area to swim. The hotel has a lovely pool, long enough for length swimming, with more loungers set alongside. Desk and chair provided in room would serve as an ideal dressing table, however there was no mirror or socket near it! WiFi effective across the site. “All-day” food menu covers most tastes at typical hotel prices. Breafast choice of English, Indian or Sri Lankan (try egg hoppers with fish curry for breakfast - delicious!). Wine seems expensive in most hotels in Sri Lanka compared with UK/EU prices, here being similar. Food is good and tasty (although curry & rice seemed rather “westernised” and not at all spicy), service is leisurely, but everything is cooked to order and we were in no hurry! They will ask you for your dinner order during the course of the day, and your breakfast order before you retire at night. If you wish you can opt to have meals served at your own patio table. Staff English speaking seems quite limited, but we didn't have any issues with this. Nearly all of our food and drink service was provided by the very kind and helpful frontman Dammika. Sunsets overlooking the ocean with a cocktail or a beer were beautiful. Overall this is a small, well kept, quiet total relaxation place, with the crashing waves as background, only occasionally overriden by a tooting horn to remind you there's a busy road and a world outside the high front wall. There's little or nothing to do other than relax, which suited us just nicely for a few days R&R at the end of a long, busy tour of Sri Lanka. In fact as the hotel occupancy was low during our stay it had the rather exclusive feel of a gated private villa! Nearby: If you want to step outside the hotel there's little or nothing worth walking to, and it's a busy main road, but dozens of tuk-tuks ply this road so we grabbed one (cost Rs 1000) to visit nearby Unawatuna, which has a big, clean, safe-for-swimming sandy beach, with plenty of beachfront bars and cafes with sunbeds (some free if you eat/drink there). Unawatuna is however a go-to resort for Russians - many shop signs and bar menus there are written in dual English/Russian - although that didn't trouble us.