Cypriot Swallow Boutique Hotel

very responsive and accommodating manager/owner; comfortable and quaint rooms; quiet location, walking distance to a lot of places worth visiting; worthwhile for couples as well as individual travellers

We booked the Cypriot Swallow following great reviews, including the Lonely Planet recommendation. However, it unfortunately ended up being one of the worst ‘hotels’ we have stayed at (calling it a guesthouse or apartment would be more accurate). The owner very kindly let us check in later (around 8pm) which, combined with the beautiful building, is the reason for 2 stars rather than 1. However, the check in was quite awkward and slow whilst she calculated how much we had to pay. Once this happened, she was keen to leave quickly, giving us little information and just saying ‘make sure to give a great review’. The room itself wasn’t clean covered in dust. It looked like it hadn’t been touched in a long time. The safe didn’t work, and on the second day, the shower didn’t either. We didn’t see any staff members until check out (where we were again told to ‘leave a great review’ without any questions about how our stay was) so these issues could be easily fixed - we would have been as well staying in a cheaper AirBnB. The worst part was undoubtedly the noise. Understandably, because it’s an old building, sound proofing will never be great. However, our room was right next to reception and we could hear absolutely everything. On our first night, a small group kept on ringing the doorbell after midnight before giving up and leaving. This made us feel unsafe. There was then a group, alongside the receptionist, who were very noisy at 7-8am each morning. Because there were no curtains, it was already light at this time so it was hard to get back to sleep (meaning we got less than 6 hours sleep due to the late night disturbances). There were also smokers in the courtyard and the smoke seeped quickly into our room, making it hard to breathe. We would’ve brought up these issues during our stay but there were no staff in the hotel to bring this up with except via WhatsApp. We’d highly recommend staying in North Nicosia but unfortunately not this hotel as the good reviews did not at all match our experience.