Holiday Club Naxos - Giardini Naxos, Italy 

Beautiful setup: Many different bushes with nice flowers, large pool, large area with the houses. The large pool has only 2 ladders, no area to slowly enter the water like some stairs. We saw a handicapped women almost drawn trying to get out. Children have to be lifted out, even in the children area. The animation is done by teenage students, quite unprofessional. Neither children nor adults were joining. The beach (400m pass 2 streets) is stones only, no sand and a chair costs you another 10Euro per day. The air conditioning, fridge and toilet flusher did not work. We had called 2 times with no reaction, passing by the reception (3times in total) did help and the fridge and airco were repaired. At the end of the stay we were presented with 9Euro per day for the baby crib, we could have bought a new one for the same price of our stay.

First impressions are good in Holiday Club Naxos, the setting is really lovely and the place seems perfect, until you see inside the accommodation. We stayed in two different apartments within the complex, the first was awful, decorated in 1970's style and quite obviously hadnt ever been decorated since then. No kettle, not very clean, light hanging out of the ceiling, 2 inch gap under the front door - very basic although it did have a good air conditioning system. In my opinion this was not a 3* - far from it. The second week we got moved to a different apartment, this was much better and had obviously been updated in recent years and was a lot cleaner. Still no kettle! There's not a lot going on in Giardini Naxos so we ended up getting the bus up to Taormina (much nicer) almost every night. We also walked to Naxos Centre (about 10 minutes) and San Giovanni (about 20 mins) which have a little more going on than Giardini Naxos. Holiday Club is a minute from the beach but very difficult with pram/buggy. If you manage to get a good apartment it is perfect for a family holiday, lots of activities for kids and adults if thats what you are in to.