Porta Dipinta house

The house felt cozy, and the location was perfect for visiting Bergamo Alta. Angela's parents were very warm with us. But I strongly recommend against staying here in winter. Heating is uneven: the first floor gets very hot while the ground floor stays cold. Turning up the heat makes upstairs even hotter and warms the ground floor, but the floor remains very cold. The downstairs rooms have practically no ventilation, so with the heating at maximum it's hard to sleep. Those rooms are basically dungeons. They're cozy, but have no light at all, so you spend most of your time upstairs, where space is rather limited. In the end, the house feels small because the ground floor is only for sleeping. The free food wasn't for us. At least for Italians, it was all very average and low quality, and some items were expired. There were 20 eggs in the fridge expiring within 48 hours of our arrival, a nice touch but not useful to us. The instant coffee had expired a year earlier. I don't expect the owner to stock high quality products, but I was annoyed that much of the food was full of preservatives, which I would never eat. The kitchen is getting old. Turning on the lights, kettle and hair dryer made a sound that lasted at least 10-15 minutes, and it only went away after a while when everything in the house was switched off. Summer may be a different story. The garden is amazing, and you can open the rooms onto it and rest there. For me, though, winter is a no go. A hotel would have cost the same and been ten times better. It would've been less space, but the house is small in practice since the ground floor is just for sleeping. Finally, I'd avoid Bergamo Alta with toddlers. There's little to do, the streets aren't pram-friendly, and the only playground is tiny and sad. You can drive to the mountains or a lake, but between Christmas and New Year the queues are horrendous, and it takes hours.