Boardinghouse La Grotta

Really nice Italian restaurant, and the food tastes great.

The hotel is central but tucked away on a quiet side street. We had a lovely double room with a bathroom, and breakfast was good and plentiful. The manager and the rest of the staff were consistently friendly and helpful. Many thanks.

I have never had an experience like this, especially after staying at such hospitable hotels earlier on my tour. The service was appalling, and the owner gave the impression she didn't like guests. I couldn't see any other staff. At breakfast, there was muesli but no milk. When I asked for some, she slammed an empty yogurt jar onto the buffet. The buffet ran out quickly and wasn't replenished for at least an hour. Then she complained that I hadn't returned the borrowed coffee spoon, which I'd left in my room. The room also had only an almost empty roll of toilet paper. My bicycle was in a covered area for bicycles and motorcycles, locked to a hook. In the evening, two motorcycles blocked it in. The owner didn't try to figure out how I'd get it out in the morning. Instead, when I went to find it, she said she would put it out on the street because the space was needed for the motorcycles. Since it was locked, I managed to stop her. She then threatened to report me.

The one thing this hotel had going for it was being near the city center. We preferred spending the evening there instead of in our rooms. At €70 a night, the place was an outrage, and we'd never return. We had called ahead and booked two rooms, expecting a family room with two separate bedrooms, and had also reserved courtyard parking. On arrival, the front door had a “Closed” sign, so I looked around for another entrance. Someone called back rather unfriendly, saying the door was open despite the sign. After check-in, we were given keys, asked if 9:00 a.m. breakfast suited us, shown how to reach the rooms, and left on our own. The family room turned out to be two adjacent rooms off a narrow corridor under the roof, with a large bathroom at the corridor's end. It felt like servants' quarters. The sparse furnishings and bare essentials made us uncomfortable. My TV worked, but volume could only be changed on the TV itself; the other room's TV was choppy and unwatchable. It was very hot that night, with hardly any air coming through the small windows, and street and restaurant noise came through clearly. Breakfast was worse. We were ready at 8:45 but found a locked door. They unlocked it and let us sit, though they were still setting up. Breakfast finally began at 9:00. The buffet was abysmal, just two small tables with a tiny selection of cold cuts, cheese, jam, and fruit. A small carafe of orange juice and milk sat on the table with three pre-counted rolls already cut in half. The coffee from the barista machine was bitter. They served hard-boiled eggs, and at least two were sent back because they didn't taste good. We did eat our fill, but the whole experience was very uncomfortable.