Riverside Holiday Village Review - 17 of 30 Reviews

My husband and I stayed here for 2 weeks Apr/May 2013 and have never been to Northern Cyprus before. We needed a relaxing holiday after a hard winter and health problems for us both. Booking the holiday was very easy on line, quickly followed by an email confirmation and we also booked extra leg room seats with Monarch. Flights were great, coming back plane was nearly empty! Taxi pick-up no problem, nice Mercedes taxi and driver, although he did drive a little fast for me. Riverside did not disappoint, the welcome on arrival was friendly and the porter took our bags to the accommodation. We had villa 60, near the restaurant and it was spotlessly clean with a kitchen and TV with lounge furniture downstairs and an upstairs bedroom with en-suite bathroom. The bathroom could have been a bit more modern and updated, but it had a bath, shower,sink and toilet with towels changed every day. We had balconies either side of the room on the bedroom floor, which was lovely as you caught the sun at different times of the day. Riverside has 3 lovely pools. we used the adults only pool most days, plenty of umbrellas and sunbeds, no one hogging them all day as in some resorts! Restaurant staff were good and the food was ok for what we paid. We upgraded from B&B to half board on arrival as there is no where else locally to eat without going into town with a car. The only thing lacking was fresh fruit, we had to buy oranges and bananas for breakfast as there were none available really. The outside tables at the restaurant were lovely, covered by a pergola with vines all over and the sunsets were a real photo opportunity - fantastic! We used the free hotel bus to go to the local beaches which made a change from the pools and also to go into town. Car hire is £20 per day all in apart from fuel, which we thought was cheap, so we hired for 5 days. If you travel to the top left hand side of Northern Cyprus the scenery is fantastic, orange groves, olive tree's, eucaliptus tree's and there's plenty of history at Soli or similar if you need it. Most evenings we just sat in Reception using the free Wi-Fi and chatting to the staff. We found the Ranch Bar a bit pricey so we stayed away, although the acoustic evening made a change. A-la Carte restaurant was ok, but nothing to run after we thought. The on-site shop had most things you needed, although bit pricey again, but the lady who run's it is fantastic, she willingly gave us credit if we had forgotton our money! Only disappointment was on our leaving day we were not being picked up until 7pm and had to be out of the room by 12 noon so it could be made ready for the next occupants. I did speak with the reservation manager and she said we could use a shower around the pools, but there were no showers at the pools. Anyway in the end we managed to get another 2 hours, but it would have been nice to stay in the room and have a proper shower. Weather was absolutely gorgeous, the hotest spring for 18 years - it made our holiday!!

So to sum up a lovely relaxing place with beautiful gardens, we would recomend people try it as it is different from south Cyprus, it reminded us of the Greek Islands in the 1970's; although we may not go to the North again ourselves.

Liked — The Gardens
Disliked — Ranch Bar prices

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