Ionis Hotel Athens: Modest hotel in a dark surrounding
Tip Rating:
Updated By belgrade03 on October 25, 2003
Hotel Ionis itself is very fine if you dont have much money to spend on accommodation. Rooms are clean and cosy, bathrooms also very clean, service is more than satisfactory, room cleaning is daily. I only had breakfast which is on self-service basis, but they also serve lunch and dinner. Everything in this hotel in modest, but what I didn't like at all is the surrounding. The hotel is located near the Omonia square in a small street where drug addicts gather every day in something like a bar. The scene is very unpleasant although these people are so stoned that they can't even move, so they are not aggressive at all. But the only feeling I had passing by was to get away as quickly as possible.
Yesterday morning (Monday 24/Nov/2008) while I was making coffiee in a hotel restaurant my girlfriend asked one of the staff (older guy, pink shirt) how to make it -because there were two boxes with brown powders around - we had no experience with local coffee. When the guy saw me pouring water into a coffee cup he went crazy and started to yell at me in front of other hotel guests: "WHAT IS THAT? WHAT IS THAT"? He took my cup and took it back to kitchen. At first I thought he's joking, and he will instruct me how to make it. But he came and shouted "THIS IS GREEK COFFEE!! IF YOU WANT COFFEE, GO AND DRINK FRENCH COFFEE THERE!" (the other coffee tasted horrible - one of the reasons I wanted to try this one). I was obviously shocked!!
The guy in the reception wasn't nice either - when we came to pick-up our passports, he threw them on the couter without a word.
The area is very bad. On Omonia station I saw twice when thieves tried to open my girlfriend's rucksack! The first night we were looking for some greek restaurant nearby, side streets were full with groups of strange, dodgy people. One girl was even sniffing coke on the street, some guy was unconscious already. Streets are dirty.
I must say rooms were ok, the younger person in the restarurant was nice and helpful.
But anyway we felt relief when we got to the airport at the end of our "adventure."
