Cerro Mar Atlântico

Booked as a last minute holiday to escape the dull weather & rain in the UK with EasyJet Holidays. Arrived long before the check in time but the hotel provide a large luggage room & then there are changing facilities in the spa if you choose to head straight to the pool. Pool towels can be rented for €20 & can be changed once a day. If you use the indoor pool hats must be worn & can be purchased for €5. The spa area does not require hats to be worn. There is a sauna, steam room & cool plunge pool. The gym seemed to have a good range of equipment & some free weights. We found the reception team to be friendly & welcoming & the communal areas & bathrooms in the main hotel were spotless. The hotel is located on a steep hill so if you are located in one of the other 3 apartment blocks you must be able to walk up a short but steep hill. There is a small shop which sells water, cold drinks, alcohol, snacks & general groceries but they only take CASH. Lidl & Aldi are a 10 min simple walk away. Lidl is bigger & has a better range of products. Each apartment block has its own pool area but your key card will let you in the gates to use any pool. Some are quieter than others. We were lucky to have a top floor apartment with a sea view. The one bedroom apartment was very clean & had everything we needed for a 5 night stay. The kitchen had a fridge/freezer, toaster, kettle, filtered coffee machine & oven / hob. There were enough pans & cooking equipment to make simple meals. The apartment has plenty of storage. The beds in the bedroom were firm but I found them to be very comfortable. The pillows were quite lumpy but I wasn’t bothered to look at changing them. The sofa in the lounge is a bed & has a full single pull out underneath. The mattress on this pull out was fine for a child but an adult would have felt the springs. The beds had thin duvets & there were plenty of blankets in the cupboard but we brought our own 4 tog single duvets for the children thanks to EasyJet’s generous luggage allowance! The bathroom was clean & functional however there is an automatic light so when in the shower you need to pop your arm out & wave to get the light to click back on. This wasn’t an issue. We had a small balcony which looked over the pool, roof tops & out xx to sea. The bedroom had sliding doors which opened up onto more of a Juliette style balcony. There’s a small TV which had loads of channels & a few in English. To reach the town there are almost 100 steps which is fine on the way down but tough going coming up! You will need good mobility to manage the steps. I believe the hotel offers a shuttle a few times a day & Ubers are cheap. Overall we found the hotel & apartments a great find & with the right price would happily return for a short break. The old town has lots of nice restaurants & we enjoyed walking to the Marina & along the coast. We used the land train one day to explore which was good value & a nice day out.