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My family recently spent a nice few weeks travelling around Namibia. After a long drive down to the coast, we stopped in Walvis Bay to have lunch.
It was Christmas Day.
The location of the restaurant near the beach and its architecture are beautiful. It was late afternoon and only a few tables were occupied. One family was eating desserts and others were just having a drink.
We were informed that only available food was a set Christmas menu. My husband is vegetarian and there was no vegetarian dish so we asked for options. After consulting the chef, the waiter told us that he could have pasta with tomato or vegetarian pasta. He chose vegetarian pasta. My 12-year-old daughter and I opted for oysters for a starter. Why not, I was thinking, it is Christmas. After our waiter checked the orders twice, he left. We got our drinks after 15 minutes. Since they had only one menu available, one would expect that the dishes would be pre-prepared. How wrong we were! After waiting for over an hour, we complained. Then we got our starters (nothing for my husband), I got my oysters. They forgot about my daughter’s order. The pasta was bland and tasteless, the other food was very mediocre.
Having had to wait for so long for the mains, we informed the waiter that we cannot wait for dessert anymore as we were out of time. We were told that we had to take them anyway since they had already started working on them. We got ice cream.
This was the most expensive and by far the worst meal we had in 14 days in Namibia.
At the end, we asked the waiter where the flamingos were since this was the reason that we came to Walvis Bay in the first place. He said he did not know despite the fact that the restaurant is directly on the beach. We went to the car and within 100m we saw wonderful flamingos.
But this was not the end of the story. After checking into our hotel in Swakopmund I felt sick. I was vomiting and vomiting. It was the oysters. So it was a silver lining that they forgot the oysters for my daughter.
I was ill for the next two days.
I suggest to the owner to think seriously about his chef and waiters. It is a shame that such a beautiful hotel has such disastrous and frankly...
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We looked forward to staying here when seeing the pictures, especially as we found it extremely difficult to find anything in Walvis Bay which looked even remotely tasteful. The iris seemed to tick all the boxes - great location overlooking the lagoon, a classic thatch roof with simple white bedding and sophisticated wooden furnishings. We definitely got the impression from the images the owners had put fair amount of care and personal effort into the place.
Unfortunately… we were very wrong.
On arrival we found no-one seated at the reception’ instead found the concierge lounging on a sofa half asleep. On announcing our arrival, we were assisted by an enthusiastic and surprisingly helpful chap, but this wasn’t going to compensate for the failings to follow.
We shown to a parking behind a gate looking directly onto the staff area which was unsightly and disorganized. Not a friendly face in sight. The passage to the courtyard was littered with cigarettes, dust and plastic. The grass around the pool and up the steps was unkept and food trays outside rooms were uncleared.
When shown to the room, the smell of bad plumbing and mold was intense enough for us to turn away without a second glance, immediately requesting a better room. We were happily obliged and served complimentary drinks in the restaurant.
However in closer inspection we were appalled at the cleanliness of the hotel. Stained carpets, dust on all surfaces, bits of plastic and paper strewn - we knew dispite the staffs efforts to accommodate us - we did not intend to stay.
Sipping on our free drinks we promptly cancelled our booking.com reservation and hightailed it search of alternative lodgings… anything but this disorganized, unsanitary and tattered yesteryear gem - now nothing but a sad reminder that group owned boutique hotels are not a good thing.
This place needs management! It has potential but it’s definitely not living up to the image it projects!
Till further...
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Wow I can’t even begin to explain how dirty this hotel did us, they played us for fools and beyond disrespected us plus our time and money. Our accommodation was books way in advance weeks before our arrival on the 9th of October when we go there the hotel told us a lie that our rooms were water damage and there was no electricity and that they had to move us to a different low class hotel. Only to find out that this was lie they had double booked themselves and decided to leave us stranded and disrespected us like we didn’t pay for the accommodation and left us to search for own alternatives accommodation in a foreign country where we are tourist and visitors. They don’t value their patrons and they have double standards and very disrespectful. I will never even recommend this hotel, the food is blends and the management is beyond rude. This pictures were taken on arrival before the whole...
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