Grand Hotel Esplanada

We had a lovely vacation here, booked two separate rooms with common balcony and small hallway, bathroom with shower, toilet and bidé. Spatious rooms, including a small fridge for storing water, fruit etc. Our room overlooked the pool area but others overlook the more boring backside of the hotel. It was quiet, no boisterous kids activites etc. The street was in a quiet area but close to a road and park that during the evening was full of ice cream places, open stores, small market etc. until 23/24 at night. Pool area nice and clean, gets sun until 4 pm. Close to the beach where the hotel included a beach umbrella and two sunbeds in the price, there are also safe deposit box below the umbrellas and showers at the beach. Well kept beach, very shallow and a bit much sea**** at times but overall great. The hotel changing rooms were locked and a key would have needed to be fetched at a kiosk a bit away, which was closed for some time during midday, was not really worth the hassle so we ended up changing in front of the changing rooms most of the time - why not just have unlocked changing rooms during the day - there is nothing in there anyway?? We had half board and the food was very nice quality. Breakfast was good, fresh buffé with fruits, hams and salamis, different sweets and croissants. A separate area where you could order eggs, omelette or crepes. Beware, the omelette is huge, must have been 5 eggs so that felt a bit unnecessary, and it was a bit oily too. Coffees could be ordered from a special barista coffee bar for free during breakfast. Dinner was a feast with a huge buffet of starters, then a selection between 4 different primis (pastas or soups) and 4 different secondi (meat/fish/veg). Then dessert buffé with one or two home made dessert and some other puddings. The only thing was that the children's menu was unnecessaily limited, a few pastas and choice between schnitzel, chicken nuggets and pork chop with french fries. While the adult menu changed every day the kids menu was the same so it could have benefited from more variation. Not all kids love to eat deep-fried stuff every day... The staff was very very friendly and accommodating in all ways possible. A taxi to the train station at Latizia-Bibione cost 40 Euro, otherwise there are buses to the central station in Bibione and from there bus number 1 stops one block from the hotel, this is not in Google maps but just ask at the bus station.