This is a perfect place for a family holiday, not so much if you are single. Nothing fancy, but a good place to stay close to the sea and with magnificent, big pools. I went with a friend with some problems to walk, and I must say it was not the ideal place for her. Because you really had to walk a lot, to the resaurant, to the pool and to the sea - it took 10 min from the hotel room. The rom was spotless, clean and functional. Hard beds but I personally like that, but my friend not so much. The food (all inclusive) was plenty, grilled meat and fish, veggies and fruit - and all good, but nothing to write home about. The icecream on the beach was superp thou!

Everything was very clean & in most cases the staff were very pleasant.No entertainment for adults but great for kids as the entertainment team were very infantile & liked shouting & applauding themselves as nobody else bothered apart from a few Germans who are strange anyway.If you're looking for Italian food this is not the place to come.A couple of pasta dishes & pizza with no toppings even in the so called Pizzeria.Ice Cream was only available on the beach.Nothing to do if it rained as there was no inside entertaiment or bars etc.No village to walk to as the nearest was 10km away.If you like isolation,cheap drinks & boring food this holiday is for you!

The Resort grounds and pools are lovely - but with an almost 90% German occupancy the food, entertainment and staff were all German orientated. It was such a shame as had been to Sardinia with Citalia last year and was looking forward to the fresh fruit and salad. Food a real let-down - tinned fruit and very little fresh. Salad leaves at dinner brown and could have been leftover from lunch. The rooms were big but quite bland - nothing in the fridge and you had to pay for use of room safe! Unfortunately a lot of electrical faults - blackouts at dinner - luckily we had served ourselves and were sitting down. Happened about 8 times - rooms had no electricity for an hour one evening - and some rooms no water too. It was unhappily for us not the Italian experience we had hoped for - but more like a week in German holiday resort.

We first visited the Garden resort four years ago on the recommendation of friends and had a thoroughly enjoyable week, so much so that we wanted to return the following year, only to discover that Thomson's no longer offered the holiday, nor did any other tour operator. So we were delighted when we stumbled across the holiday being offered by Cosmos and decided to book immediately.

It was nice to return. And of course our children, being 6 and 8 adored the swimming pools. Which brings us to our first niggle. Probably because it was towards the end of the season, but the pools, particularly the bigger one, were rather grubby and in need of a lick of paint. More disturbing was that the bigger pool turned an ominous shade of green in the middle of our stay, and whatever chemical they added to kill the, what I can only assume to be, algae, made swimming in the pool impossible because of the burning sensation to the face. And given the lack of swimmers it was evident that we weren't the only ones who suffered! Luckily the smaller pool didn't suffer from the same problem, so the children were kept happy!

Staff: I totally agree with another reviewer who commented that the bar staff were rude. We tried on all occasions, out of courtesy, to order in Italian ... and generally got surly replies. The cleaning staff were all very friendly, as were the staff in the main restaurant. The reception staff, depending on who you got, were a mixture of the two extremes!

Food: We thought the food, given that it was being produced on an industrial scale, was excellent. The salads were all all pretty samey from day to day, but everything was freshly produced. Although the restaurant was descended upon by about 300-500 at mealtimes there was never really any waiting time, and everything more or less worked like clockwork. It was also good that the pizza restaurant stayed open until 1030pm, for a little snack before bed!

Entertainment: to be honest, although the 'animation' staff more than tried their best, the entertainment, particularly the evening show, was fairly mediocre. Obviously they were catering to a mostly German audience, which perhaps might explain a difference in sense of humour. The shows from four years ago were much better!

Other gripes: on the last two days of our holiday the hotel suffered powercuts. The first of those two days the water in our room turned brown and the stench the next morning of sewerage was quite unpleasant. On asking the reception what we should do we were only told everything will be ok in one hour, which, to be fair, it was. But we were put off using the water in the room for the rest of our stay.

Final word: It seems a fairly negative review ... but we did have a good time, and will return. Just disappointed the standards have slipped from our first visit - and taking the icecream out of the all inclusive (apart from at lunchtime on the beach), is a real travesty! Now hope that by leaving this review that someone 'on high' at the Garden Resort will read this and try and make the necessary changes to bring the resort back to its former glory ... oh, and Cosmos, please, please, please change your tour rep next year, the one for 2011 was hopeless!