We ended up here after our holiday company - Right Holidays - decided to stop sending people to the hotel that we were meant to go to, which had had many complaints. We were delighted to find, after driving through some jumping nightlife parts of the peninsula, that we were staying in a quiet area by the sea.

The food is plentiful & tasty, and seemed to be on a fourteen day menu as we only saw a couple of soups twice. Breakfast is the same each day with a selection of cereals, cheeses, meats, olives & fruit, along with a boiled egg and a different hot dish each day. Lunch & dinner feature a soup, a range of salad dishes, a hot chicken/turkey dish, a hot meat casserole type dish, along with a pasta or rice, a vegetable dish & chips or potato wedges. The snack bar cooks burgers & chips all afternoon, then offers a selection of simple pastries until early evening. The only negative would be that after time we tired of the overall format, which remained the same daily. We opted to eat a couple of meals out towards the end for variety.

The staff are very helpful & friendly, they all speak good English. We were the only British - which suited us just fine! - majority of guests are Polish, Turkish, German, French, along with many others. The guests were mainly families & couples which lead to a very pleasant atmosphere throughout the holiday.

Entertainment was light & mostly in English as the communal language. Each day there was water polo & volleyball, then in the evenings there was a kids mini-disco, games, dancing & a Turkish Night - nothing too heavy. If you wanted something more than this you could easily get one of the buses that runs until 2am to the local town, or even a trip from the hotel to the big night clubs of Bodrum.

Included drinks were available until midnight and included beer, white wine, red wine, raki, gin, vodka, tea, coffee & soft drinks. After midnight they are charged for, as are various other drinks throughout the day. An extra option that one romantic German guest arranged for his wife as an anniversary surprise was a meal for two at the end of the private jetty...aah!

The views from the beach are amazing! The Greek island of Kos dominates the horizon, with small islands in front. The sunset is probably the best we have ever seen and could be viewed from the pool bar, or just wander down to the beach. We found a bar along the beach with tables on the sand that offered the most relaxing place to take in the views.

There are private beds for hotel guests on the beach, as well as a private jetty with bean bags on and a ladder into the water. The beach itself is sandy & clean, it is actually a Blue Flag Beach. The wind keeps you cool even in the soaring temperatures, though be careful of burning to a crisp! The sea can range from very calm to quite choppy with the wind, the seabed shelves gently, so you can stay in depth if you wish.

As the wind was up during our visit, we found the sea a bit choppy most days, so we spent a lot of time by the pool. The pool has no shallow end, though there is a paddling pool for the little ones (or the big ones if they let you in!).

The rooms were cleaned daily and we never saw any dirty areas in the hotel at all. The maintenance staff work hard, the pool being cleaned every night and the gardens being lush & well tended. Whe we requested an extra toilet roll, some soap, or a light bulb replacement it was done within minutes of asking.

The hotel facilities included a pool, kids pool, restaurant with poolside, indoor or gardenside seating, tennis court, table tennis, pool bar, hairdresser & mini-market. Next door is a hotel that offers Turkish Bath & many spa treatments, I had a Turkish Bath with soap massage for 20 euros which I was able to arrange through the staff at the Rana Beach Hotel and the masseur came to collect me from our poolside.

There is no village as such nearby, everything that you can see is an apartment or hotel as far as we could tell. The local towns or Gumusluk & Turgutreis are 5-10mins by bus for about 70p, the first being a picturesque fishing harbour with underwater runs & an island to wade to, the second is a town with a marina and lots of bars & restaurants catering for the English - if you like that sort of thing! From either of these places you can get another bus onto Bodrum for about £1.20, which takes 30mins.

We found the Rana Beach Hotel to be a perfect retreat for rest & relaxation with beautiful romantic walks along the beach at sunset. Everything else that we might need was within easy reach by bus at a small cost.