When booking a hotel with the word "paradise" in the title, I expected luxury, perfection and an all round good holiday. Let me tell you the regency at paradise court is not all it seems.

Our first probelm occured before we even reached our hotel. Our taxi driver had never even heard of Regency Paradise Court, and even upon giving him the full address of the location took us on a wild goose chase around the hills trying to find it. Paradise Court is set in the hills, far from the beach even though its advertised as a "3 minute walk "from Las Americas. It is approximately 1 mile from the beach down a steep, slippery slope. Although admittedly the surrouding area is not a fault of the hotel, it would be difficult if not impossible to walk down to the beach with a buggy or wheelchair. The paving is that shiny marble type which sends you skidding down in your flip flops. Most of my shoes were abandoned deep in my suitcase! Forget walking back up. My partner and i are not lazy and both enjoy a good walk. I am 21 and he is 22 and we both found it too much to travel to the beach and back before a night out back down that hill again. We found ourselves constantly flagging taxis, even without our heavy bags of water from the supermarket. There is no local decent shop, apart from a small underground place across the road which is about the same size as my garage and stocks very little. No sign of fresh bread or cakes anywhere nearby!!

If you are not very strong (or have a rather full suitcase!) it might be worth arranging an apartment near to reception. As the accomodation is built on a steep hill, we had to walk down waht felt like a million of the steepest steps of your life to get to our room. I could not carry my case up or down these steps single handedly.

The apartment itself was of a decent size, although I did feel a little as if I'd travelled back to the 1970's. It was clean but we had a horrible hard little sofa and a chair with one leg missing. The glass door out to the balcony which looked out over a few other dingy apartments didn't lock, and the fans in the rooms made one heck of a noise.

The pool was quite small, but funnily enough even being august only about 25% of the sunloungers were occupied at any given time. Thats great if you like to lounge around the pool. There was no entertainment other than a small pool bar which was run by reception.

All the kitchen appliances were fine, and there was enough plates and glasses etc. We were even supplied with washing up liquid which was a bonus!

There was a tv in the room which the book said had a few english channels, but only itv was tuned in. There was also a 30euro deposit for a remote control so you couldn't change the volume unless you got that. This may prove a little difficult though as reception is only open from 10 - 4 and was also closed on our 2nd & 3rd day.

I have only managed to enclose a picture of the reception but personally I think it gives a good overall impression of the Regency Paradise Court. I will not be staying here again and would not recommend it unless you are desperate for last minute accomodation like I was.