First Choice - Paliouri, Greece

Booked a last minute holiday at Chrousso Village, Paliouri, Halkidiki, all inclusive. Resort was described as 3+ star.

Accomodation was more than adequate, but that's about the only positive thing I can say.

The resort itself is a twenty minute coach ride from anywhere other than the beach, which was knee deep in sun beds at an extortionate price. The only form of entertainment at the resort was the pool, only open from 10 til 5, or the bars where there were no where near enough seats to accomodate all the residents.

The food was 1* at best. Absolutely everything was swimming in grease, even the salad, every single meal was a serve yourself buffet, and the only way you could get anything hot was to use the serve yourself microwave to heat it up. It was not a restaurant, it was no better than a really grotty transport cafe and even that may be unfair to transport cafes.

We wanted to see a bit of the country as we'd never been to Greece before so booked up some trips. We specifically asked about distance as I have difficulty sitting in the same position for any length of time (I always have the aisle seat on the plane so that I can move about without disturbing everyone) and were assured that it was two hours maximum on the coach. I turned out to be four and a half hours, without a rest stop, on the way there and four hours on the way back, again with no stop.

We were also assured that the coach would be air conditioned and that there would be plenty of opportunity to buy drinks etc as necessary, so only took a small bottle of water each. The air conditioning wasn't working and in fact there was nowhere to buy anything other than the usual gift shop selling guide books etc, and the lunch provided by the resort didn't include a drink. One stop was at a vineyard, but the majority of the party went straight for the water bottles and ignored the wine on offer!

After that experience, we cancelled the rest of the trips and did get our money back, though we didn't expect to.

We won't be travelling with First Choice again.