We made the mistake of visiting the restaurant of the Kirini Hotel in Oia, Santorini, Greece, on the evening of October 4th 2007, since we did not feel like going out and wanted to enjoy the undoubtedly nice view on the Caldera from the Kirini Pool terrace. After the previous experiences, we should have known better 🙂
The setting was great, the service perfect – a wonderfully friendly young man, local to Santorini, serve us. This is just to say that he is not to blame for what happened afterwards. Also, the wine was a dry local one, perfectly ok and correctly described by the waiter. Then came the food. We went for seafood, which seemed a good idea, being on Mediterranean island. The prices were right ahead obscene, the starters the mid-30 Euro area and the main courses in the mid 40s. If you compare this with the perfect experience in the 1800 two days ago, it could have been ok, given that the hotel is known to be overpriced, if the food have been flawless, but it wasn’t. I had langoustines as a starter, which had clearly seen their hours of freshness quite a while ago and were mealy and tasteless, served on a bed of fennel and other greens without any significant seasoning. You could have had this material in a local Taverna for 8 Euro with better freshness taste. The fish that followed was unedible, and I’m not making this up. Leathery and cold, it was again not fresh, which, as we reckoned by then, is not wonder because not other idiots were making the mistake of eating here and the cook was trying to stretch the time before throwing away the food which was not consumed. A local cat which knew the situation better than we did, was prepared and had a great meal for about 40 Euro. She had, as we learned, little babies and I felt I did something good feeding the stuff to her. My company had the same sea bass made different style as a starter and, while finding it edible, was not particularly excited. She then had the most expensive main dish, a drag fish soup, which was boringly flavoured, almost cold and suffered the by then well known shortcomings.
We did not take a desert and went to town for the coffee. I can only warn to visit this restaurant.
As a start, it was recommended to put on the dive suits in the center, before going on the jeep, driving 20 min to a different spot on the beach, getting on a very small rubber dinghy with a total of about 10 people and driving another half an hour to the first dive spot. I found this inconvenient. Everything was very crammed and it was certainly the least comfortable dive trip that we had since doing our Open Water certificate in Thailand. The first dive spot at the white island in the center of the caldera of Santorini was quite nice and relaxed. It was a wall dive of about 18 m depth and 45 min length. Visibility was very good.
The second one puttygen , however, wasn’t. Without proper briefing, the guide led the group into two caves, which is clearly a violation of good practice. People without training for dives without direct possiblity for ascend should not be led into such situations. Since I felt I had to follow my buddy, who had already entered the first cave, herself following the dive guide, I went into the first but refused to enter the second. The lunch break was too short and unpleasant due to the small, crammed boat.In this particular case, I have to say that I could have asked for these things beforehand and would probably still have gone on this tour if I had known before. It was our first dives since 2003 on Bali and since there are only two dive bases on Santorini (one was already closed), there was not much of a choice.
The dive trip was 60 Euro per person.
If I compare this with almost all other dive trips we had, food, space and guidance was not sufficient. The situation in the cave was nothing but dangerous and I therefore cannot recommend this center.
The Kirini Hotel is located in Oia (Ia) on the Santorini island, 84702, Cyclades Islands, Greece. I’m staying here for five nights in early October 2007. As part of an association called “Relais & Chateau”, this is supposed to play in the same league as some of the finest hotels in the world. To make it clear right in front: It doesn’t. As will be repeated many times in this blog, the luxury of our modern times lies in privacy, space and silence. All of this is actively violated here.
But let’s start with the good things. As probably all of the places in Oia looking towards the Caldera, the crater resulting from the disastrous outbreak of the Santorini volcano 1600 BC , the view is stunning. The suites are moderately spacy and the staff is friendly and tries to fulfil the wishes of the guest, as long as they are standard. And here is where the problems start. The communal areas of the hotel are all located around a small pool where also breakfast, lunch and dinner are served in small caves. If you don’t insist, the music is turned up to an unbearable level. If you ask for it to be turned down, your request is fulfilled and minutes later the level comes up again. You can do this three times and then the discussion starts. “It’s the policy of the hotel”, is the first answer to your “Why”. Further dispute ends with the typical “I only work here” and “Talk to the manger”.
So, you go back to your room – but only to find it as a victim of a chemical assault 🙂 A so-called “air freshener” has been used by the room maid in such an amount that breathing get hard and asthmatic attacks follow. I thought this might have been an insect repellent used only on the first day but it wasn’t. After the room being “made up” in this way, it was not usable for more than three hours. Since the rooms are carved into the crater walls, air exchange through the small window in front is slow. We asked the room service to stop these assaults for the rest of our time being here, which worked.
Directly next to the potentially most private senior and superior suites in the hotel, there is the laundry and assembly point of the personnel, always accommodating a large enough number of people to create a constant stream of loud chatter in Greek and Russian, starting at 8 am in the morning. The place could be wonderfully quiet. Maybe this is again the policy of the hotel, so the guest do not feel too lonely here.
For a location where one is just supposed to relax in various places, this hotel is a total disaster. The only potential place to hide in silence and shadow is your room, which, again, is in the chatter range of the laundry personnel (not only our room, but a least a hand full). I can only recommend to avoid this hotel if possible.
I travel too much. And I’m spoiled. Dunno how it happened. It tends to be more difficult every time I travel to find a place which satisfies me. The reason for starting to write about my travel and the places I visited is to create publicity for things that do not work well, although it is easy to get them right. So, if you are looking for descriptions of beautiful places, cocktails and sunsets, this is probably not what you’ll be interested in. But you’ll get my opinion on hotels, restaurants and other service-oriented places I visited. I’m trying to be fair. However, primary reason for writing an item in this blog is “not being amused” :-). Let’s see how it goes.
A study recently published in Acta Cryst. (2007). D63, 941-950 by E. N. Brown and S. Ramaswamy on the quality of protein crystal structures revealed a positive correlation between a journal’s impact factor and the error rate in its published protein structures. The graph shown in my previous posting assumes the theoretical situation of a similar distribution of errors in crystal structures in all journals. If that was true, 50% of all papers would have a worse-than-average and 50% a better-than-average quality. As the graph shows, the reality is different and high-impact journals publish more papers with low quality crystal structures. This can both be attributed to high-impact journals publishing cutting-edge and therefore less well defined structures as well as to authors rushing to publish high-impact work, according to a report in CE&N (Aug 20, 2007, 11).
A science blog by Carl Zimmer reports a number of of scientists wearing now just your regular style of tatoos but those proudly proclaiming their work. I especially liked the DNA dragon of Ad Bax. Another guy’s DNA tattoo gives, in DNA code, the Amino Acid One-Letter notation EEE – the initials of his wife :-). But there are many more to see – so many more that Zimmer moved them over to a Flickr set. I’m really no fan of tattoos – I would never hurt myself in such a way 🙂 – but it’s fun to see how much thought people spend on certain things.
Recent Bug Fixes and Improvements in the StructureDiagramGenerator (SDG) class of the Chemistry Development Kit (CDK) initiated a discussion on the need to refactor the CDK SDG code in order to make it more maintainable and extensible. This motivates me to write a series of blog items on the subject. This is the first one, with some general remarks on the topic and a basic overview on how the CDK SDG works.
Putting chemistry into presentations can be a pain in the neck. Keeping it up-to-date is even worse. When I access elderly presentations of mine, where I put ChemOffice stuff into Powerpoint via OLE, I can be absolutely sure that the information is lost, after moving to Linux, Open Office and free structure editors. But there is hope for the future …
The Chemistry-Information-Computer (CIC) division of the German Chemical Society announces the 3. German Conference on Chemoinformatics (21. CIC-Workshop)
to be held in Goslar, Germany, November 11-13, 2007.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish.AcceptRead More
Privacy & Cookies Policy
Privacy Overview
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
