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Avoid a Lohan Meltdown By Soothing Yourself With This View

Where: 72200 Ierapetra, Crete, Greece

We are suckers for a room with a killer view.  We find that we are even more likely to forgive some minor hotel inconveniences if we can stare out the window at something pretty--yeah we are that shallow. Let's help out our fellow hotel mavens by uploading rooms with killer views to the HotelChatter/Flickr photo pool, or by sending the photo along to us. We will feature our favorites in this space from time to time. Remember to tell us the name of the hotel and the room number of the hot view.

Have you ever wanted to have a young-celeb-lady freakout? Trash a room, tip off the paps to your crisis, storm the hotel suite of an ex-lover, hotbox yourself in a bathroom and take some scandalous photos that may or may not leak in Star magazine? Maybe engage in a little head-shaving and eyebrow-raising trysts with bodyguards and things?

No? Never wanted that? Okay, let's ask the question a different way: have you ever felt so stressed that you were absolutely certain you were going to have a meltdown of Lohan proportions pretty soon? Okay. Yes.

We ask because we want to help — and because we're pretty sure gazing out the windows of a hotel room at the Petra Mare Hotel in Crete may help soothe your troubled soul.

This shot comes to us from mfoord, and it's a view of the balcony of a room — and, according to the website, most of the 227 "spicy" (hehe) rooms have sea views like this. Nice.

[Photo: mfoord]

Tags: Movenpick Hotels / Crete Hotel Reviews / Mediterranean Resorts / → All Tags

Crete's New Mövenpick Mixes Swiss and Greek Together

Where: Heraklion, Crete, Greece, 71414

About eighteen months ago we mentioned that the former Candia Maris resort on the beautiful Greek island of Crete was being taken over and turned into the Mövenpick Resort and Thalasso Crete. In fact, they've spent a good two years doing renovations and are finally open for business.

With all that time passing we're figuring the new resort won't resemble the old one very much. The Mövenpick people are advertising the new Crete resort as being upscale and modern, with some particular cultural characteristics, including an:

exquisite combination of typical Greek hospitality and the traditional Swiss passion for efficiency, reliability, punctuality and precision.

They have a huge seawater spa known as the Aegeo Spa Center which includes a range of seawater baths, a sauna, solarium and steam baths, just to name a few of the ways you can relax there. The resort also includes several restaurants with various dining styles, including the open-air "Taverna" which fits the Greek surroundings well.

For all the talk of being upscale and fancy, Crete's Mövenpick seems very reasonably priced. At short notice, we'd be able to book a double room for tonight for just €95 (US$150); we're not sure if it's opening teething problems or solid bookings, but online availability of rooms from mid-May through the summer is non-existent at the moment.

Tags: Hotel News / Greece Hotels / Fugitive Hotels / → All Tags

The Greco Amirandes in Crete :: Luxury Fit for a Fugitive

Where: GR-711 10 Heraklion, Crete, Greece

Last year we mentioned the Hotel Thule in Namibia, which became famous as the place thieving former Comverse executive Jacob Alexander was tracked down while running from the law.

Apparently Amirandes in Greece, on the island of Crete, is the place to stay when you're a fugitive Greek who has run a Ponzi scheme hedge fund into the ground. That's according to this New York Post article, which says this find may not have a happy ending. Greece won't extradite a naturalized citizen unless he's guilty of something like murder, not just stealing $80 million from defrauded investors.

Angelo Haligiannis is certainly having a grand time with the stolen money:

About a month after he cut off his ankle bracelet and vanished on Jan. 10, 2006 - he was to be sentenced the next day to 15 years in jail - Haligiannis was living it up, gambling at the Club Hotel Casino Loutraki, a swanky retreat and spa on a gorgeous beach near Athens, sources said.

And the party carried on until last Monday, when he and Liz, comfortably settled in a $2,500-a-night suite at another posh hotel, the Amirandes resort, sipped champagne on the beach while their daughter frolicked in the sand.

The really ironic thing about this story is that Interpol and federal marshals searched for two years but hadn't had any luck tracking him down. Haligiannis finally got caught when a family member of a fraud victim spotted him at the hotel, snapped a photo, and called the cops.