Ashton Lodge

The staff were friendly and looked well presented, but the food didn’t meet standards. The oysters tasted warm and a week old. The garlic bread tasted like plain bread with a poor butter substitute and no garlic at all. The Coke was flat.

There were three of us squeezed into a tiny room with bunk beds and a double bed, and nowhere to put our suitcases. We were told to park out the back. We did, then woke to a $60 parking ticket. The lodge said we needed an Ashton Lodge sticker on the window, so we parked the same way that night with the sticker on, and got another $60 ticket. This time I went to the manager. She said there was no parking there and to use the side of the building, even though she and the staff had their cars parked there. Hmmm. The pool area is really nice for sitting and relaxing quietly, since there’s no room to do that in the rooms. There’s a back gate, but when we came back through it, the manager was waiting to read us the riot act, saying it was one-way only, OUT, and alarmed. We had our electrician friend check it, and it isn’t alarmed. We’re three women in our fifties who thought it would be nice to holiday together and see Darwin’s sights. Everything we were told about the accommodation before arriving was crap.

A nice place to sit outside and have a beer. The service was friendly, and the food was standard pub fare.

Relaxed setting, and the pub food was good.