La Gare

The room and service were good. The hotel faces the railway station, though, and some trains stop there late in the evening. They’re quite noisy.

Friendly people and a tasteful place.

The B&B has a lot going for it, especially being just ten meters from Magenta train station, but after four work stays over five months, I don’t think it’s living up to its potential. Each visit I had a different room. The two-bed attic room couldn’t be locked from outside and opened straight into the bathroom. In the three- and four-bed rooms, the closets were already full, leaving only a couple of doors for clothes. All rooms had private bathrooms with large, well-organized showers. The bigger problems were organization and staffing. Guests often had to wait for someone to open the door or hand over a key, and repairs took a long time. The breakfast room is large, old, and charming, but quite messy, with dust on the floors, furniture, and sofas, as well as dog hair. Breakfast also got worse over time. At first there were coffee pods, ham and cheese, jam, rolls, croissants, cake, individual yogurts, cornflakes, dry biscuits, and juice. Last week, a waitress served coffee from a big moka pot, with one croissant per person, dry biscuits, some apparently left from earlier days, yogurt in a large container that had been sitting out for days, and fruit juice that tasted rancid. I heard other guests complain about the meager breakfast too. The owner or his representative was never around to sort out various problems. With some maintenance and better organization, this could be a gem.