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We went to the Dune Village in Sardinia during the third week of May (just before the half term week) 2005.
We had one of the best holidays ever! The hotel and facilities are fantastic. My two children are 3 and 5 and they were dancing in the baby disco until 10pm at night! Normally they are in bed at 7.30pm'ish! We used the mini club - again the staff and facilities were great. The children often had lunch in there and we would go an have a civilised, adult lunch, then we'd collect them mid-afternoon and go to the pool. My daughters still talk about the staff and the holiday now.
I was concerned that there would be very few Brits there (only from the point of view that it's nice when the children make new friends). It is a multi-cultural hotel but there were enough British children for them to play with very happily.
The one-bedroom rooms are clean and simply furnished but very spacious, with a fridge which is always very useful.
There's a good choice a restaurants, so you don't have to eat in the same place every night (which was important to us), and the quality of the food is very good.
The beach is two minutes walk and very clean with free chairs and umbrellas and a good range of watersports.
So, as you can tell, we had a great time!
Claire Card
May 2005
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We just returned from a week's stay at Le
Dune, travelling with a 4 year old and a 2 year old. We flew with Easy Jet to
Olbia, hired a car and then made the trek through the mountains to Badesi
Mare--about a 1-1/2 hour drive. With such high accolades for the resort and a
4-star rating, I must say our expectations were high. Forst impressions were
not especially great however -the road leading up from the beach to the hotel
appeared in need of repaving and the reception area fairly old fashioned. We
stayed in a Junior Suite in the Ginepri area -- quite a spacious suite with a
lovely, west-facing terrace overlooking the tennis court - simply and fairly
eclectically decorated. The main hall was very busy at 8 pm and the food on
offer tasted nice though. In our view this isn't just a child-friendly hotel,
at least in this area, it is a child-oriented hotel. Nearly every table had at
least 2 children -- so mealtime was certainly boisterous. Enough of first
impressions. In the end, we really did enjoy our holiday. The hotel is clean
and very friendly. Our kids loved the evening Baby Dance (even if it was mostly
in Italian) and the guys and gals staffing the Baby and Mini Clubs were
absolutely lovely. My little girl cried as she said good bye to all her
"teachers". The beach was terrific. The Ginepri pool is where we spent most of
our pool time and it was OK--too bad there only steps on one end. The baby pool
up by the playground was good for small children, just not much for the parents
to do as there is not much area around it.The play area there (Villagio
Paradiso) was OK. On the beach Our little girl rode a pony which she really
enjoyed and we even took advantage of the evening babysitting to have a very
rare meal out--just Mom and Dad. Very nice. So, all in all, a very enjoyable
holiday in simple accommodation with a hard-working staff, good activities for
children and a lovely beach. Buon Viaggio!
Ann Prahl
June 2005
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We spent
two weeks at Le Dune in August 2004 (first two weeks) and it
surpassed our expectations. The accommodation was spotless on arrival and
maintained to this level throughout the stay. All the staff were extremely
friendly although their level of english did differ. We preferred Le Palme
swimming pool which never seemed to get too crowded, even in the second week of
August which was much busier than the first. Most the of the other guests were
Italian (hardly any english) and the entertainments seemed to be geared towards
this. The beach was a comfortable stroll away and again - very clean with
plenty of sunbeds and parasols. We made excellent use of the
watersports.My 2 year old was not at all happy in the baby club though and
consequently only spent two mornings there. My 8 year old did enjoy it
slightly more but as there were no other english children there at the time,
was in no rush to go back - however the watersports, swimming pools and
other activities in such a safe environment meant going to the club was not
essential. He could find his own amusement. The highlight of the village for
me was the standard of food in all 6 restaurants - it was all excellent and
far surpassed expectations. This was the first hotel/village type holiday we
have taken, having usually villa holidays with friends and I was converted -
the activities kept all the men in the family happy - and the excellent
food, no need to shop, cook or clean made me a very happy Mum.
Helen
Anthony
11/09/2004
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We
stayed at Le Dune Village from the 12 - 26 June 04 and had a fantastic
holiday. We have 3 sons - age 6, 4 and just under a year, and there was
something for everyone. We choose to stay in a Senior Suite which provided
good spacious accommodation for us all, although we did ask to move from the
original room allocated which was very noisy at night. Our second room still
had some traffic noise due to one of the village roads passing at the back,
but it was much better than the first room. The room was very clean on
arrival and was maintained to this excellent standard throughout the 2
weeks. We tried 3 of the six restaurants and found the food to be good in
each of them, the pizzas at the Pomodoro were very good. There were always
highchairs available for our youngest in each restaurant. Mineral water and
house wine is included with dinner at each restaurant. As we were on half
board we bought a snack lunch from either Le Palme or Le Ginepri cafes which
had a good selection of paninis and mini pizzas etc. We found this to be
perfectly adequate and always very nice. The ice creams at Le Ginepri were
always popular as were the excellent coffees. Both the Palme and Ginepri
swimming pools were lovely and there were ample sunbeds. We especially liked
the fact that the lifeguard removes towels from any sun beds that have been
left unoccupied for a period of time. In addition there was no rush to get a
sunbed in the morning, there were always plenty available even at
10.30/11.00am. Both these pools have excellent shallow areas for children.
We only made use of the childrens club on 2 occasions, but our children
enjoyed themselves. The staff here were really lovely, although they did not
speak a great deal of english. We found all the hotel staff to be polite and
efficient,and most were friendly. In general We had managed to learn some
basic italian before our holiday and it was definitely very helpful
throughout the holiday. Sardinia is most certainly not a major tourist
destination other than for the italians, and for us this was part of the
enjoyment. The Baby Kitchen facility was very good; there was a fridge
stocked with milk, yoghurts etc and there was a microwave, bottle
sterilisers, bottle warmers etc. There was also a room with some baby baths
which would have been invaluable had our baby been younger as there was only a
shower in the bedroom. (We managed with the shower!) There were lots of
activities all the time if you were interested, although we did not take
part. There is a a childrens disco each evening which is great fun and we
watched some of the nightly shows which were put on. The language issue did
make this less attractive however. The Dune Village has a charge card type of
system to pay for any extras and this worked really well, it was nice not to
have to carry any cash around. The beach which is a 5-10 minute walk was
beautiful, although the sea was a little rough some days. The sea gets deep
quite quickly, so you have to keep a close eye on the children. The sand
however is lovely. There is a good supply of deck chairs and parasols for
hotel guests. We only managed to get out a couple of times and would loved
to have explored some more and seen some more of the fantastic and beautiful
beaches that Sardinia has to offer. This was a great destination for the
children as it was only a 2 hour flight from the UK. As I said at the
beginning, we had a fantastic holiday and plan to return to Sardinia again
soon.
Frances Jossaume
09/07/2004
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