Lanzarote Princess Hotel H10 – Playa Blanca – Lanzarote

This place is brilliant! I would return & stay here in a heartbeat. First impressions as we arrived on the bus to Playa Blanca, was that all the other hotels looked so pretty & nice & we were worried what we were going to get. But we needn’t have worried. It maybe wasn’t quite as grand as some of the ones we’d seen, but it was more than enough for us. Check in was very smooth & quick, everyone very friendly & helpful. We were told that the restaurant had now closed (9. 30pm), but as we have arrived late there would be a cold buffet laid out at 10. 30pm, so that was very good of them.

The package we booked was for a family room, so this meant a ground floor room. No view as such, but still looked out on to the pool, & was perfect for us. The room was nicely decorated, quite fresh feeling. Definitely clean feeling. I have arrived in hotels before where you don’t really want to sit on the sofa as it feels a bit mucky, but this was the complete opposite. We settled into the room very easily & for the 7 days we were there, it felt like home. Maid service was every day, & they swept the floors, made the beds & changed our towels every day. We hired a mini bar fridge for the week as the room doesn’t have one, that cost us 15 euros, but well worth it. We also paid for the safe, not sure how much we paid for that, but we did get back a 10 euro deposit. Had a few small issues as the week went on, but they were all resolved quickly & efficiently. The safe wasn’t working one night, fixed in no time, the toilet got blocked twice, but both times fixed very quickly, & on our last day our room key stopped working. The reception told us we had to have it re-validated after 12pm, as we had a late checkout (but was slightly annoyed that no one had ever told us this).

Food was sort of varied. There are 3 theme nights where some of the food is representative of different countries. But at the same time there is always more plain choices to have. They serve pasta each night, freshly cooked with ingredients of your choice & the sauce of your choice. There is a grill on every night with different fishes or meats. Each night there was a pizza of some description & always chips on offer. Always plenty of fresh breads, & plenty of cheeses. Salad on offer every night too. Desserts, there were plenty to choose from. Always about 8 flavors of ice cream to serve to yourself, along with various different flans & sponges & cakes. The only thing I craved for by the end of the week was to be served our meal, I did miss the fact that we were eating out every night, but yet we were serving ourselves, but it wasn’t an issue, I just think you tend to eat too fast when it is a buffet service. Lunchtimes, meals were served in La Choza bar outside. The menu had plenty different sandwiches on it, along with more substantial meals if you prefer. This was waiter service, but then we were paying for this. Had lunch from there 3 times, & was happy with our meals each time.

The location in perfect. When you leave the hotel, you only have to cross a road & walk down a short path to get to the beach promenade. You can walk into town this way, or just down the main road, which is about 5-10 minutes walk with the shops starting after about 4 minutes walking. The staff were generally all friendly. No real complaints until the last day actually, when I had to go to reception about the key not working. I was a bit disappointed at the ‘reception’ I got from the lady there. She argued that our key needed to validated – I told her that my husband had checked the night before that they had a note of our late checkout & confirmed with them that we’d be leaving about 5pm, but had not been told that the key would stop working after 12pm. I was more annoyed at her for not just saying sorry about this misunderstanding. She then told me we have to settle the bill, I said we’d be doing this when we check out. It so happened that it was this same lady who checked us out, & my husband had been no more impressed by her attitude & disappointed that she hadn’t asked how our stay had been, or hadn’t wished us well in our journey home, we expected this as common courtesy. Despite, her, every one was great & friendly & helpful.

Entertainment, hmm, well is that what is was called? Firstly, I think that the hotel doesn’t necessarily need to put on much entertainment. Perhaps a disco each evening might have been enough. There is a mini disco for the kids earlier int he evening, then there is bingo, & then the evening entertainment, provided by the same poor souls that have been running round after the kids all day & geeing people up to play mini golf, or pool, or water polo etc etc. It was quite frankly, terrible! The first night we went in, they were doing short sketches. This was hilarious, but for all the wrong reasons. Gradually people were leaving, & we decided to do the same. We tried another evening when it was a Grease theme. It wasn’t the worst thing in the world, but all it seeemd to be was 5 people miming a grease soundtrack in the background & going through each song, one by one. Wasn’t funny, wasn’t silly, wasn’t very entertaining. But do not let that put you off, as it really was not necessary to have this entertainment. In the bar, there was more entertainment, this time it was two guys on a piano, sometimes singing, sometimes on saxophone. But they were pretty good. I would absolutely go here again, & will recommend this hotel to all my friends.