Beach restaurant

Beach buffet also served breakfast.It opened at 12h30 for lunch and had 2 grills, pizza counter and some cooked repetitive food. Salad and desert bar.
They made additional food every day like cochinillo, paella.
The seasoning was missing, but when I found some red spicy sauce, the taste of meat was very good. Paella wasn't that good.
I can cook it much better and still won't be like Spanish paella. I mean they didn't add much to the rice, not even bell peppers to add taste.

Buffet

Buffet
Cooked food
Beef was good when grilled.We traveled a lot around the world and Europe in particular, and we are ready to try many foods. Not too dificult, but like a bit of spice or herbs, pepper at least.
surprsingly ketchup was good and I left ours to the maid. Mustard very similar to one back home, but I personally prefer dijon. So, next trip we bring some maggi and tabasco.
The cochinillo, roasted pig, could be even so much better with some horseradish for example, nothing fancy, I found a spicy sauce and really enjoyed that meat.
They had quality ingredients, but some dishes were just bland. Ribs were good, fish too. I found meat in sauce to be good it had some cumin in it.
One night the octopus were prepared in spicy sauce, correctly cooked, which I enjoyed. Many canned foods in salads bar, but this is ok to add more variety.

The soup was the worst. It looked the same everyday with over boiled fish, sometimes veggies were added, but over salted. I was hopeful for improvement
but it wasn't good. The tomato is not the only possibility for cooking foods as seasoning. In this case they weren't peeled and stuck on your teeth.

Imported luxurious food and drinks, like smocked salmon, serano ham, crab, cheese at each meal. In general food was in abundance. The breakfast was exceptional with cooked foods and more specialties cooked on order. Cava included at all meals.
Papaya was good, juices were good, but sometimes substitutes were used, in particular at the beach.

Our waitress at the buffet was very nice and we had several good chats with her in Spanish. At the beach waiters were really nice too despite some confusion at the beginning with serving wine.


Hamburgers and hotdogs were BBQ on the beach and were ok. Hamburgers are made with sausage meat. Deep fried fish was good.
Chorizo was also grilled. They had olive oil for the salad, but sometimes vinegar was missing.

They made pizza as well. The sauce looked a bit plastic, but our son still enjoyed it. He was also a fan of omelettes and crepes made to order, which he was very patient to wait for a while.

 

Restaurants a la carte review

Restaurants a la carte review

Aquas sea food had nice ceilings but the decor as a station with plain white walls and 1 wall painted with some fish. A cafeteria looks at best
Just adding some candles would add to the atmosphere and some basic decor woul make it more special. The food was ok to good.
My shrimp salad was fresh and finally with some garlic. The langosta slightly overboiled, then grilled in butter. I stuck to simple items and it was the way to go.
My husbands tuna cake didn't look nor taste anywhere like tuna, His pork chop was ok. Our son's fish was good and puree very good.
Deserts were similar to buffet. Creme caramel.

Bistro was nicely decorated and food was very good. I had a bisque de langosta. It wasn't creamy but water based, but tasted good.
Followed by grilled fillet mignon perfectly cooked to my taste medium. Then an Opera cake for me, cheese cake for our son and not sure what for my husband. They
didn't have his desert, so it was replaced with some other cake mousse.

Our room

Room

The room was quite big and nice and had a balcony with sea views. A nice surprise, the additional bed was awaiting our son
and the maid came in to place it and made his bed.
Toilet brush was missing. Should we bring one with us as a gift next time.
soap rack was missing and the soap was getting messy. I used glass coasters but they were blue and could tint the marble.
lime clogged shower and toilet container. Was ok after power rinse with shower head.
Bath with shower head very impractical head  as it is a cylinder on the vertical sense when hung and impossible to have hands free or inundates all the bathroom.
As we had sea views we didn't want to change rooms and find other inconveniences, but we could fix some problems ourselves. We cleaned
the shower head with mending kit, and the pressure became fantastic, then using the shower we rinsed under pressure the lime
in the tank, and that unclogged the toilet water supply pretty easily. Now, this should be a monthly routine procedure in such place by the sea
and with high calcium content in the water. The maid should be able to report this and trigger the procedure, without getting upset clients.

Club Elegance
The only thing was 4 restaurants were reserved for us, however I still had to line up for 1 hour to get a gala table reserved. Kind of defeats the purpose.
We didn't have towels in our room and were told to go to the reception to get a card, then get our towels by ourselves.
We didn't want to spend hours with towels, because the place opens at 9 AM or later. I usually bring my towels, these nobody will steal to replace their missing towels.
However, at the check out I was requested to give the towel card, which I didn't have. The woman seemed to be somewhat upset, but I can't give back what I didn't receive in the first place. But if it is mandatory, why the towel tickets are not automatically provided to each guest, so we don't have to queue for it spending hours on this and restaurant reservations? And so we can provide them at check out?

Our stay at Melia Jardines

 On the bus I has a very nice chat with another family and fellow travelers.
Arrival and check in
Confusion reined. We arrived by bus with a nice and short ride, had a nice chat with fellow travelers, about beach improvements.
Then husbands went to pick up luggage and we went inside a room or a check in. A man was surrounded by people so we all joined.
Not so easy, he told us to go and see another woman or Transat, which we did. The woman was upset and told us to go and have a seat.
Then the man called our son's name. He ignored me when I answered and kept walking, so I had to run after him and shout it was us.
He then gave me a silver bracelet and took our passports. He asked to bring my husband and son for theirs. Which I did. He then noticed he lacked kids bracelets. Not very proactive, but he was generally nice. The passports were handled with care, and they didn't lose our visa cards.
Then a guest woman went ballistic and hysterical saying there is no such law to take our passports outside of our view. She was offered to
check in separately but passports were still required. I am not sure why someone would contest laws that can change in a country.
In Europe they used to do it all the time at every hotel and can still request it any time any where.

Our bags were identified with our room number, then we walked to our room in block 11, which was further from the lobby, but closer to the beach and had some sea views above a field with the donkey and swamp views. We received our bags after a while and went to the beach. Our block was brand new and had still some paint drying or appeared to be.

The swamp happened to have spectacular flamigo birds. Mosquitoes were bad. Bring the DEET or other spray. We also had coils and citronella candles.