azuLine Hotel Bergantin — Hotel in Sant Josep de sa Talaia

Don’t be fooled and book here. Ibiza is a lovely place but please save your money and book somewhere else. It’s like a council estate block of flats but with less sleep and more people smoking weed!! This is a 2 star half board hotel at best. You get dropped off on the main road and have to cross over walk up the street up the slope and steps dragging your cases for 5 mins to get to the reception. When you do get there you are greeted by a miserable man who takes about 20 mins to check you in and doesn’t have a clue about anything you ask him regarding hotel facilities. The hotel from reception onwards is dirty, tired and run down. Rooms are extremely outdated and remind me of going on holidays with my parents in the 90s. Beds are so low they are almost on the floor, between 6-7.30pm there is no hot water and shower is a dribble out of a dirty holder over the bath. Walls are so thin you can hear everything the person in the rooms next to you and above/below you are saying and for an extra treat there is a vent in the bathroom shared with the people next door so you can hear them going to the toilet! You have tokens to get cups to get drinks which you have to spend half your holiday queuing for from the inside bar by the only pool there and if you loose your cups you have to pay for new ones if you want a drink…also don’t bother asking for the all inclusive ice creams as they were always running out!! The snack bar wasn’t a snack bar, you had to join the enormous queue for drinks to get to the bar to then order either deep fat fried nuggets, deep fat fried burgers, deep fat fried hot dogs (yes that’s right a hotdog cooked in a chip pan!!) or a soggy toastie. No food laid out to help yourself, no salad or fruit ect just queuing at one bar to order rubbish you then have to queue again for to collect. The main restaurant can seat about 30% of people staying there so constantly massive queues to get in to the restaurant for breakfast, lunch or dinner. If you could be bothered queuing it must have been because you couldn’t afford to eat out as the food was the worse I’ve ever seen. 3 choices for main with 1 being fish, stale bread, 3 unknown desserts and the same salad every night. Not even a kids section there!! We stayed for a week and had breakfast there once and our evening meal once as it was that bad!! Staff were rude and didn’t care and if you are a family of more than 4 forgot getting a table as there is only 5 tables in whole restaurant that seats more than 4!! Now you have no energy from lack of food you want some sleep….forget that!!! It’s like every broken family on benefits have been shoved into one hotel!! Music blasting till gone 3am, people shouting from one balcony to the next, feral kids running up and down the corridor banging on doors for fun when their parents all party in one room. When you’ve had enough at gone 3am and pick up the phone to call reception, guess what….that’s right, the phones in the room don’t work!!! On a side note my aircon was leaking like a river from day one. I reported it to reception 8 times In 6 days and both my boys slipped and fell on the leaking water which I also reported. Guess what..it was never fixed and no accident report was taken when I told them my boys were injured. Please please please, take my advice and stay somewhere else. This is my 6th holiday abroad this year and the only one I’ve left a review like this for. Don’t...

Rooms: We stayed for 5 days in a Premium twin room (with access to the sun terrace). The room was clean and fairly modern with a TV. We brought our Amazon fire stick so we could access YouTube using my phones hotspot which was easy enough to power and connect to the TV in the room. There was plenty of storage and the curtains blocked out the light if you wanted to sleep in. My only complaint for the rooms would be the thickness of the walls, ceilings & doors allows a fair bit of noise pollution especially when people are coming in from clubs in the evening. The noise levels varied from night to night so potentially worth bringing ear plugs!

Our premium room also granted us access to the restricted sunset terrace. This was great for grabbing a chilled drink in the evening and never seemed too crowded. It gave lovely views over San Antonio bay especially during the sunset. Would highly recommend.

Pool Area & Bar: The hotel had two main pool areas, a family pool (the biggest) & an adults only. Both were great. We spent most of our time at the family pool as it was the biggest and had the most opportunity to get shade if you needed it. The pool bar served snacks from late morning to early evening. The selection was okay however the quality reflects the price you pay for the hotel. The pool bar also offers a selection of Nestle ice cream which were great! Although we didn’t participate in anything the entertainment team always had stuff going on throughout the day to keep kids active (e.g Archery, water polo & fun games). The staff also brought around water melon slices mid afternoon which was nice.

Food: The breakfast/lunch & dinner was served in a buffet style restaurant and was on a rota so we had something different every day. The selection wasn’t as big as some other hotels I’ve been to however we still found something to eat every night so can’t have any complaints. There are self serve soft drinks available in the buffet restaurant as well as a manned San Miguel tap.

Drinks: The soft drinks on offer were all branded (Coke zero, Fanta Zero etc) this was refreshing as you often see hotels opt for the cheaper versions but these drinks were great. In terms of alcohol the hotel offered San Miguel on tap, a wide selection of cocktails, local spirits and Santeria. I’ll leave a photo of the drinks menu below. The only problem when drinking pints is that they were served in 1/2 pint measures which meant I was often going up and down to the bar a lot. All bars closed in the evening at 11pm. Overall I was impressed with what was on offer.

Transport accessibility: The L9 bus from the far end of the airport terminals (arrivals side) stops 200m outside of the hotels entrance so was ideal to catch from our morning flight. We arrived to the hotel at 11am and checked in which gave us access to the all inclusive bar & food immediately. Even though check in was at 3pm we went back and asked for an update around 2pm and the room was ready!

A taxi to the San Antonio Egg was around €7.40 but if you time it right you can take the bus to the station in San Antonio for around €1.80 and only takes 6-7 minutes!

If you are going to any of the night clubs on the other side of the island you can also catch the disco bus from the bus station for €5 each way which was helpful. Just allow 15 minutes before departure as it can...

I was pleasantly surprised with my holiday here. We made a conscious choice to keep the cost low while still finding a somewhere with adequate reviews and ratings. We expected compromise, as should anybody buying a budget holiday package, and yet our stay at this hotel was far beyond expectations.

I'll start off with the only real negatives I can think of. The rooms are a bit dated, perfectly clean but needing updating and the bathroom in our room was lacking a few cosmetic changes. The sink pipes could have been boxed off very easily and cheaply and the shower is crying out for a new shower head.

Now for the positives. We visited in the first week of October so admittedly the hotel was much quieter than in peak season, regardless it was just so peaceful. The adult pool is nicely tucked away and aside from the occasional noisy bus on the road outside it was completely serene. We did venture to the main pool a few times too, as expected that was much more excitable with children playing and running around, but even then it wasn't annoyingly loud and we could still sit and relax. The location is ideal for a 20 minute walk into San Antonio or the other way into the bay, having previously stayed further down the bay and needing to get a water taxi across to San Antonio it was nice to be more inbetween the two ends and have the option to walk either way. The hotel lobby was bright, clean and had plenty of space to sit and relax if the sun got too much! The bar staff were always friendly and attentive and the €1 cup rule never caused an issue as we always remembered to keep our cups on us so didn't get a backlog.

I'm putting this part in a separate paragraph altogether as this is my key reason for leaving a review: the food!! Usually I'm not keen on all inclusive food at all, i quickly get bored to the point of nausea with the same bland tasting food on offer. Knowing I am like this, we typically budget to be able to go out for food at least once a day, we still book all inclusive so we can have 2 other meals at the hotel and will usually mix up going for breakfast, lunch or dinner away from the hotel. This has been my experience even at 4 and 5 star hotels. A lot of the negative reviews we read about this hotel was that the food wasn't quite good enough, this is what we considered to be a fair compromise knowing I'm not a huge fan of the food usually anyway. All this being said, to my amazement, the food at this hotel was absolutely incredible. Full of variety, flavour and colour and plenty of choice to cater for all food preferences. The food was so good that I almost went home with a fuller wallet than I came with due to not having to pay for eating out. The only time we got food away from the hotel was when we were out on day trips, even if we went down to beach we would trot back to the hotel for lunch. I never got bored, I never felt ill at the thought of a plate of cold grey meat. If anything the only disappointment was that I didn't have a big enough belly to eat more of it.

All things considered, if we ever wanted simple, straightforward, peaceful break from life again in the future this would 100% be the hotel we choose! The fact that I'm writing this review 2 months later still thinking about what a great time we had and how I would love to go back...