Villa Isabella Residence

You get some privacy and peace here, while still being a reasonable distance from the action.

Really great.

A pleasant place.

We only managed four nights of the six we'd paid for at Villa Italia. We got there at 8:25 p.m. after six hours on hot, winding mountain roads, and if we hadn't been so exhausted, we'd have kept driving. The pillows smelled awful, the sheets were frayed and poorly washed, and there was someone else's black hair on them. Towels were replaced only weekly or for an extra charge, and not right away. The dishes were dirty and mismatched, down to there being no two cups or glasses alike, like a low-income family's collection at their dacha. We asked three times for a hairdryer and never got one. We were told it was "stuck" in another guest's room. Breakfast was the same every morning at 9:00 a.m., half a lightly toasted ham and cheese sandwich with orange juice. Coffee wasn't available every day. On Sunday the omelet came with well-done bacon that tasted noticeably rancid and was completely inedible. The air conditioner filters clearly hadn't been cleaned in ages. When we first switched it on, dust and mold spores came out, so we shut it off. We ended up taking out and cleaning the filters ourselves and spraying Lysol on the heat exchanger. Dirt was an issue in general. The floors barely seemed cleaned, and the gas stove was alarming, whether because it was so old or so poorly cleaned. A thin film of grease on the counter made it sticky. The kitchen sink drained slowly, with a gurgling sound, and a sewer-like smell spread into the living room. The shower barely worked: little water came from the overhead head, while the massage nozzles sprayed thin streams and seemed 90% clogged. The flexible hose shower couldn't be switched on normally. I manually changed it over to the overhead spray, and after that I could at least wash my child more or less normally. There's a no-smoking sign on the wall. We don't smoke, but the owner, who lives downstairs, smoked late into the night. Smoke came through the open windows into our room, especially "pleasant" at night. The villa is right by the road at a crossroads, so mornings started around 5:00 or 6:00 a.m. with reckless Dominicans revving their motorcycles as they turned onto the straightaway.