Hillside Gardens Holiday Village

Hillside Gardens - not as it seems

We stayed here for four days early August and would not under any circumstances go again.

The staff are unhelpful, bordering on rude. Pleasant only if they are likely to get some money from you, but ask for help of any kind and the answer was always 'no'.

It is actually impossible, not difficult, to walk up the steep hill from the bottom unless you are optimally fit and prepared for a hour and a half of hill climbing in the hot summer sun. Not a problem of course if you have a car.

The service bus was unavailable for 3 out of the four days we were there, and with young children and an asthmatic mum in her 60s we felt somewhat trapped. The bus was working but they never seemed to be able to spare the staff to drive it!. Bizarrely on the last day they said we could put our luggage in the service bus to take us to reception for check out, but we had to walk up two steep hills. Why not just allow us to get in the bus as well? Even when we explained our mother was asthmatic, they still said no!!!!

They also kindly offer a free delivery service from the supermarket. Great idea except when we asked for items to be delivered there was never anyone available to bring our stuff. Again because the area is hilly, not the easiest thing to do - carrying back shopping in high heat was not fun.

I would never recommend this place to anyone and strongly recommend you look elsewhere for your holiday in Turkey. The area of Yalikavak and gumusluk is stunning and has plenty of better villa complexes available.

Whilst the properties are lovely and I am sure the owners of the properties are great people, the management and staff running this small complex seem to want to make your holiday as unpleasant as possible.

* Only place in the world I know that charges for table tennis hire. We were also told the airconditioning was £10 a week but mysteriously increased to £15 on checkout.

A word of caution, we made the mistake of just letting the man do the inventory on his own (small kids needed attention and with a pool there I could not of course leave them while I counted every item in the house). He made a fair few errors and we were of course charged for these items at checking out time. I know it was my fault for not counting as well but we had looked after the property well and taken great care to leave things as we found them, so we felt feeling cheated about having to pay up.

The internet cafe is 1 computer in the back of their office. The children's playground is one small slide and a seesaw - etc etc. The description of this complex as seen on their website is no a true representation.

Holidaymaker beware!!