Green Park? More like Green Mould! Green Park Apartments, Golf Del Sur, Tenerife. (Green Park Apartments (Golf Del Sur, Tenerife))

Member Name: GillMN

Product:	Green Park Apartments (Golf Del Sur, Tenerife)
Date:	06/04/09 (338 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: The plane home!

Disadvantages: Dirty, Noisy. Unsafe. Unsavoury. Plagued with half starved cats.

My husband and I were in need of a rest and some sun to break up a very long winter.

We loved Tenerife having visited a couple of times before, so I looked on the internet and booked us into the Green Park Apartments, Golf Del Sur. They are situated about a twenty minute bus ride from Playa de las Americas. There is very little in the immediate area besides apartments and golf courses. There are a lot of building sites. There is no beach but a ten minute walk downhill and through a series of apartment blocks will bring you to a pleasant enough coastal walk with a few restaurants.

We went in Late January last year. Never again! Fortunately we only booked in for a week, any longer and we would have either had to move or book an early flight home.

It is a large building housing 5 floors of flats and one room apartments. The blocks partially surround the pools and to the back are some rather seedy sports areas. The reception area is light and airy and quite presentable.

After a short wait we were gven the key to our 'apartment'. The staff that were on at the time spoke no English so it took a while to work out where our room actually was. Fair enough, it was late and only a small staff were on duty.

We trudged along what seemed like miles of corridor and found our room. As we went in (after shoulder barging an ill fitting door!) we found the room in total darkness. We felt around for switches and eventually located them next to the cooker. Great! Well actually no, because nothing worked. I trudged back to reception trying to remember the Spanish for "Excuse me but we seem to have no electricity!" The snooty lady on the desk was not impressed with my Spanish or English and turned away to finish her phone call. I tried again. And again. And again! I got her attention by flicking the lights on and off in the reception hall. Funnily enough she shouted at me in English but at least I had her attention now.
Having decided I was 'loco' she sent a man along with me to see what the problem was. He eventually located a fuse box (which looked like it had done service under Franco) and our electricity was restored.

The room was drab, damp patches proliferated and the doors didn't fit. The good thing about it was that it was a fair size and the bed looked clean and comfortable.

It was too late to change rooms and I said to myself "Manyana. Tomorrow I will see to getting things sorted."

I set about making us a cheering cup of tea. It won't come as any suprise to you that I had to clean the cooker first. That didn't take too long because it only had two cooking plates. I opened a cupboard to look for a kettle, there wasn't one. I looked for a pan, there was one pan, two forks, two spoons and a knife. Three glasses which had ben 'borrowed' from the local taverna, two cups and a saucer! Untold wealth for the holidaying cook! "Manyana!" I said to myself and put the pan of water on the hotplate. Twenty minutes later I was beginning to suspect that the cooker had it's own problems and getting heated wasn't one of them.

I went back down to reception. Fortunately the previous receptionist had been returned to her coven and the new one was a positive delight! Within moments we had an electric kettle and very soon after, a working stove! Brilliant! I woke my husband up and gave him a cuppa.

I opened up the balcony door to get some fresh air and was greeted by the wailing of about a dozen cats from the pool area, they were competing with the bar across the plaza who were having a karaoke night. I shut the door quickly. To be fair, the bar stopped the singing at midnight precisely. Then we only had to deal with the drunken fools shouting and falling their way back to their rooms! Paradise!

The next morning I woke early and decided to go on a tour of inspection. After all we had arrived late and tired, perhaps the place would look better now? I left my husband sleeping in our very comfortable bed.

The two swimming pools looked beautiful, they were clean and inviting, they were also bloody freezing! Never mind, I went for some breakfast instead. There was a little cafe adjoining the reception and I went in cheerily for some coffee and a bacon butty. I noticed a strange smell by the door but took no notice. As I sat drinking my coffee I was mobbed by stray cats, I counted seventeen!

Have you ever tried to sit and have a quiet breakfast when seventeen cats are trying to get you to part with your food? It is not easy! The sun was shining, I didn't have to work and I quite like cats. I gave in and gave them my jug of milk. One of them bit me. Having done my bit for Anglo-Spanish, Human-Feline relations I went back to our room to find the Dettol and an elastoplast.

Russ eventully woke up and I opened the curtains. Only then did the true and abysmal state of our apartment hit me. It was a tip!

The floors were dirty, the walls were scuffed and patchy. The bathroom was filthy and tiny, the toilet bowl was cracked, the mirror was hanging on by an act of God and the shower kept falling out of it's holder. The upholstery on the couch and chairs was threadbare and one had a broken leg.

Back down at reception, around thirty guests were trying to book in. One clerk was on duty and he was surly. I asked for the manager. Eventually I was told that he was in the little cafe having his breakfast. I waded through the cats to find him and asked him to come up to our room. He accompanied me upstairs reluctantly and had a look. After a few minutes he conceded that I might have a point and agreed to move us.

Later that day, in our new, cleaner and better equipped room (two pans and a can opener!) we sat out on the balcony and had some lunch. We had a nice view over the pools and gardens. Every ten minutes or so we had to suspend conversation whilst a plane roared overhead. We were directly below the flight path to the airport! It was possible to read the numbers on the undersides of the planes because they were so low and close to landing! The noise was absolutely horrendous. No midday siestas for the patrons of our apartments was possible because the din was that bad and that frequent.

I closed the balcony door when I came out with fresh tea and discovered that I had locked us onto the balcony! There was no way to get back in again. After about five minutes of shouting and waving, we got the attention of a lady who was sunbathing next to the main pool, she kindly went into reception to ask them to let us out. Twenty minutes later and we were still locked on our little balcony. We finally got the good lady's attention again and she went in and reminded them. After another ten minutes we were finally rescued. There were no warning signs about shutting the balcony doors and we later found that this was a regular occurence.

The next day I was coming back from the local little supermarket and the lift failed with me in it. The two lifts were right next to reception and when I rang the emergency bell inside the lift I could hear it ringing at the desk. I tried three times, nobody came. As luck would have it I had my phone on me and rang my husband. He ran down to reception and made them get me out. There was a small gap between floors and eventually the doors were opened and I managed to wriggle out and down to the hallway. It took them ten minutes to react, but for me, stuck in that little lift and not knowing if the brake was going to hold, it felt like a lot longer! When I had recovered a little, I asked the receptionist why she hadn't done something sooner. She said, rather dismissively, that she didn't know what the alarm bell meant because she had never heard it before. How I didn't drag her across the desk I do not know!

Later the manager appeared with a voucher for two free meals and a bottle of champagne at the cafe. He also managed an apology, just about.

We went for our free meal. It didn't suprise me that there was no champagne available. The patron persuaded us to have the paella because that was his speciality, so we did! It consisted of a lot of rice, some mushrooms and, without a word of a lie, one prawn! By this time I had decided that we were at the Spanish equivalent of Fawlty Towers and all I could do was laugh! I gave the cats the prawn to fight over because it looked like an antique prawn that had gone to sea with Noah! We retired to the local chinese takeaway, giggling like lunatics, it was either that or cry.

We endured the rest of our stay, mostly by going out for the day and staying out of the apartment complex as far as it was possible.

I have never stayed in such an awful place before or since.

~~~Reasons to stay at the Green Park Apartments, Tenerife~~~
1. Tenerife is a beautiful island.
2. The climate is much better than ours.
3. If you like stray cats,it is paradise.
4. Transport into the city is cheap and fairly frequent.
5. The pool area is reasonably maintained.
6. It is close to the airport so no long transfer journey.
7. It makes you appreciate what you have at home.
8. The beds were clean and comfortable.
9. It is great if you enjoy plane spotting!
10. The local supermarket is quite cheap and does lovely fresh bread.

~~~Reasons not to stay at Green Park Apartments~~~

1. They are badly maintained and mostly very scruffy. Steptoe would feel obliged to clean the place up!
2. The noise from planes is unbelievable!
3. There is virtually no cooking equipment or dishes supplied.
4. The rooms are not cleaned properly.
5. Very few of the reception staff are in any way helpful.
6. The chef in the cafe/restaurant can't cook.
7. The noise and smell from the stray cats is very bad indeed.
8. There is very little to do at night unless you enjoy drunken chavs murdering songs, thrice weekly at the karaoke.
9. The lifts break down and nobody bothers to respond to the emergency bells.
10. The balcony doors lock you out.
11. No noiseproofing so it's impossible to get a full night's sleep.

~~~~~
I don't expect the world when I am on holiday, I do expect a clean, reasonably maintained place where I can relax. It was impossible to relax anywhere on the complex.
These apartments have great potential but are so poorly managed that I would not send my worst enemy to stay there.

Summary: Stay away from this apology for a holiday resort. Beirut would be more relaxing.