Utopia Blu

We have just returned from a wonderful, relaxing week at Utopia Blu hotel, with my family of 3 adults and one child. Here is my honest review! We stayed in 2 swim up rooms, which were next door to each other and perfectly located near to the main restaurant and had access to 3 different pools and had a bar next to them. The rooms were clean and had plenty of storage space. The beds were also very comfortable. The TV was quite limited mainly just news channels, but I discovered that in the apps section you can watch You Tube so found a few films that we could watch late in the evening. Please don’t pay attention to any of the negative food and drink reviews. They must have been written by very fussy eaters who might not be very adventurous. We were really worried about what to expect based off other reviews. Thankfully the food turned out to be really good. Breakfast consisted of your normal English hot options, freshly cooked pancakes and eggs, continental style cheeses and ham, cereals, yoghurts, lots of fruit, bread and pastries, nuts and seeds to put onto yoghurt. Fresh honeycomb and endless varieties of jams and marmalades. The highlight for me and my daughter was having an omelette cooked freshly in front of us by a lovely member of staff every morning! You would never go hungry at breakfast! Lunch was equally very good. It always had Gyros and pizza. A soup which changed every day. A brilliant salad bar which had cucumber, lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, Olives, Tzatziki and Greek salad and other options. There was always a hot pasta option too with different sauces available daily. The hot food changed daily but was typically something with chicken, beef or pork in a sauce. They had griddled aubergines and courgettes, chips, rice etc. On some days they had hot dogs and corn dogs. For pudding there was lots of different fruit, ice cream, Baklava, Jelly and then some mousse type puddings or tarts. Drinks can be ordered at the bar or the friendly staff would take your order at your table. Dinner was a real highlight for us. Each night had a different theme such as international, Asian, Greek, Mexican or a Gala night. The food was incredibly varied and fresh. Lots of things were being freshly prepared for you like tacos, sushi and profiteroles! There was always meat or fish being freshly cooked on a large griddle too. There was a brilliant salad bar and soup once again. I don’t eat a lot of meat and I was so pleased to see lots of different vegetarian and vegan options. There were also lots of choices for children that are a less adventurous with plain pasta, chips and nuggets or fish fingers most nights. The puddings in the evenings were also very extensive and changed daily consisting of - mousses, fruit, Baklava, fruit tarts, pavlova, Tiramisu etc. The food really was excellent! The staff that work in the restaurants and bars work incredibly hard. They were all really friendly and helpful. The bars have menus, one section is for all inclusive and another section for premium drinks which are chargeable. They all have prices next to them but you would only pay for your standard drinks after midnight. The drinks and cocktails were good. They don’t do bottles of water but you can get water in a glass at any point during the day. They do provide bottles of water in the room on arrival and a bottle of wine too. The water was replenished at times during our week. Over in Pinkoland where the children’s pool is located you can get freshly cooked crepes and toasties. Lots of people would ask us where we had got our crepes from! These are all free and very good. The hotel has a large supermarket opposite it. It has a good selection of suncream which costs about €9.95 for Garnier or Nivea. All other shops we found sold it for double that! There is a bus stop right outside the hotel. The one on the supermarket side takes you to Kos town and the hotel side takes you to Tigaki. We got a bus to Kos town to collect our hire car from Avis. It works out a lot cheaper that way. We booked it through Expedia before we flew out. Having a hire car was really helpful. It cost us £170 for 3 days. We drove up to Zia - 15 min drive for the sunset which was definitely worth it. Recommend getting there at least a hour before because parking is quite limited. We drove to Paradise beach - bubbles are located to the left of the beach about 30metres off shore. There’s a big floating buoy that says bubble area! We also went to Pyli which was about 20 mins away. Absolutely amazing views and ruins of the original old Kos town. We also drove to Agios Stefanos beach which was a stunning beach with lots of fish in the sea. We went to Plaka Forest which had lots of peacocks and other wildlife. We drove down to the salt lake at Tigaki in the hope of seeing some flamingos but unfortunately it was completely bone dry and there was no sign of any flamingos! We also had a lovely morning walking around the ancient ruins in Kos town on the morning we returned our hire car and then got a bus back to the hotel for lunch. We went to the beach at Tigaki a few times with the shuttle bus from the hotel. We had made the mistake of walking down on our first day and hadn’t realised how difficult it would be to find the area for the hotel. It’s quite a way a long the beach to the right. It took us about 20 mins to walk at a good pace. Thankfully when we were just about to give up, my daughter noticed people with the same hotel towels! They have bottled water for you and a toilet which looks like a portaloo from the outside but has a proper toilet and sink with handwash and doesn’t smell at all!! On the other days we used the shuttle bus which was very quick and convenient. The beach itself isn’t the best beach we went to. It’s not the cleanest and we didn’t see any fish in the sea. I think it’s also wise to check how windy it is before you go down as this can really affect how choppy the water is. The evening entertainment is different every night. It starts at 9.30pm and is just for an hour. Although there is sometimes a kids disco before that. The entertainment team are brilliant and we enjoyed spending our evenings in the bar playing card games and drinking cocktails! On our last day our TUI flight wasn’t until midnight so we had paid in advance to have late checkout. This was worth every penny as you got to have access to the room till 6pm. We did have to go to reception the night before to get our room key updated. Utopia Blu is a very instagrammable hotel! It’s really pretty and well looked after. It’s really clear to see that all the staff work incredibly hard keeping it maintained. Overall we have had an absolutely brilliant holiday and would highly recommend staying at this hotel! We would love to return again if we could, but will need to save up!