Hotel Villa Sofia

The bar and breakfast staff were amazing, and we loved the plentiful, tasty breakfast outside on the little terrace in the morning sun, with good coffee from the hotel bar/café. The hotel has a rustic, old-fashioned feel, and we had a pleasant stay. The downsides were the €15-per-night pet fee, which felt a bit steep, and the limited parking. The lot was almost always full, so a receptionist told us to park in front of the main entrance. They seemed annoyed when we did that a few times. I wouldn’t mind having a good looking Mercedes-Benz S500L parked in front of my hotel ;)

The big pool is out front, and there’s a rooftop sun deck with a jacuzzi. Breakfast was served rather than set out as a buffet because of covid19, but it was excellent. We thoroughly enjoyed our stay. The hotel has a lovely, slightly old-fashioned feel. Some of the bathroom fixtures reminded me of Brideshead Revisited.

The grounds are beautiful, and it’s an easy walk to the shore. Breakfast was a great buffet. It’s a period hotel, updated nicely.

It’s a quiet hotel in a great location, and the shower had really good water pressure. But the temperature kept changing after I thought it had settled, and the old clingy nylon shower curtain wasn’t great. There was no iron in the room, so I had to wear shirts crumpled from being tightly packed in my case. Breakfast was a letdown. The scrambled eggs were a bit odd, while the bacon and sausages had been kept hot too long and didn’t taste fresh enough. The help-yourself food on the tables wasn’t topped up often and ran out quickly. The Wi-Fi was the worst my partner and I have ever had. It dropped within seconds of logging in, even after we selected the option to stay logged in and were given a new username and password. There were too many Wi-Fi problems to list, and I don’t see that changing. It was hard to find at night because what looks like a path is actually the road to the hotel, and the signs weren’t clear. Check your directions carefully too: Google Maps sent our passengers to the wrong hotel Sofia on the Gardone Rivera, which turned our drive from Verona Airport into 3.5 hours instead of 1.5. A few sandwiches and drinks on arrival at night also came to a hefty 40 odd Euros on checkout. You could do worse, so don’t let my review put you off.