Stayed here 2 nights in October. I chose it because of all the awesome reviews that I found online, but we were very disappointed. The location is great, a short walk from the train station with our luggage. We were shown to our room, and a staff member told us that we had the right to the fridge, microwave, and water kettle. It was only after she left the room that we noticed the lock on the kitchen cabinet. We assumed it was some sort of mistake until we saw the sign indicating that there was a 25 euro charge to use the kitchen.
Charging anything to use the kitchen is ridiculous, but 25 euros? We booked an apartment so we could do laundry and eat in a few nights as a break from a standard hotel. We brought coffee with us and were looking forward to brewing real coffee in our room. Not only could we not brew coffee (there's no coffeemaker and the Bialetti pot was locked up in the cabinet), but all the plates, silverware, glasses, dish soap, everything was locked up. The electric kettle in our room did not fit in any of the outlets in the kitchen. There were no tea bags or instant coffee like you find in any hotel room in Europe. We had to buy plastic utensils and instant coffee at the grocery store, and wash out our coffee mugs using a bar of soap from the bathroom. There was no advantage to being in this room over a standard hotel room with a fridge.
The layout is awkward, odd lighting; many switches didn't turn on anything. I thought that having the bed upstairs would be quiet, but it wasn't. And the stairs were tricky in the middle of the night when one of us had to use the bathroom. The single worst thing about this hotel is that the walls are paper thin. We barely got a wink of sleep because we could hear everything going on in our neighbor's room - the TV, talking in normal voices, and snoring ALL NIGHT LONG. There was also considerable noise coming from the hallway and both windows. The thermostat had been switched over to heat, so there was no A/C. We expected this in October, but if we turned the units on to the "fan" setting, they put out hot air. We turned them off completely but they still radiated heat, and our room became stuffy if we didn't open the windows. There was traffic noise from one window (which surprised us because it faced what looked like a quiet area), and noise from the courtyard came in from the upper window.
I needed my Bose noise cancelling headset in order to get any sleep at all. I asked at the front desk if we could be moved to a different room, but the hotel was booked. The person at the front desk offered to call the people in the room next to us, but those people weren't being loud, they were talking in normal voices, and one of them snored. The problem was that the walls were paper thin. We could also see into the next room through the keyhole in the door that connects the rooms.
We prepaid for breakfast, but when we went to the breakfast room there was very little for us to eat. The coffee machine coffee was horrible, and lukewarm. There weren't covered buffet tins of food, but small bowls, including scrambled eggs sitting out at room temperature. There were a number of pastries, but that's not the sort of thing that we normally eat for breakfast. I was looking for fruit, yogurt, muesli, eggs, and there was very little available. We had to get breakfast elsewhere.
I talked to someone at the front desk, told her that although we'd prepaid for breakfast, we'd like to cancel for our second day. She told me it would be "no problem", and that I should just mention it when I checked out. When I did ask for the refund (just for the second breakfast) at checkout, I was told it was impossible to refund that charge. I thought that I would have to contest the breakfast charge with my credit card company when I got home, but after considerable back and forth, the hotel refunded the cost of our city tax, which I accepted, as it was approximately what we paid for breakfast.
There is no laundry in the apartment or the hotel. When I asked about it at the front desk, the staff member steered us towards the hotel laundry service. On our own we managed to find a self-service, coin operated laundromat (Express Wash), on Via Nazionale.
This did not feel like any 3 star hotel I've ever stayed in; it had more of the feel of a youth hostel. The hotel tries to up-sell you on things like expensive bottles of wine, and that was one of the reasons I was expecting a fancier room than we got. We paid $160 one night and $140 the other. I think in this price range there must be something better available. read more