Villa Carlotta

Right after I booked through Booking, the host asked me to cancel. Such a shame!

The best B&B.

There’s a kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, and living room of your own, plus a terrace and a little garden.

We really can’t understand the positive reviews. The apartment looks nothing like the lovely photos, and it badly needs renovating. It smelled overpoweringly of air freshener, as if that was meant to make it seem freshly cleaned. There was dust, dirt, cobwebs, and black marks around the doors that looked like mold. The kitchen cupboards were falling apart, and several utensils were dirty or unusable. The pans had badly damaged coating, and we had to buy a lighter because the cooktop’s ignition button was broken or missing. The oven didn’t work either. Basic things like a chopping board, paring knife, egg cups, pot holders, tea towels, dish soap, cleaning cloths, a hand brush, and a vacuum cleaner weren’t there. The dish rack couldn’t be used because its drip tray was missing. The coffee and tea set and complimentary toiletries listed in the description were also absent. The landlady didn’t meet us. A woman gave us the keys and two rolls of toilet paper, and said the landlady would come the following day. She never came, and we had no other contact. Our text message got no reply, and we received no instructions about the washing machine, Wi-Fi, or rubbish and recycling. The living room had a dirty sofa and an extra bed used as seating. Under the covers, the mattresses had yellow stains and rings that looked like urine to us. The TV only had Italian channels, and its table looked ready to collapse. In the bedroom, the shelves were dusty, the clothes racks rusty, and there were used tissues in the bedside table. The bathroom had mildew on the ceiling, a broken shower hose, and no toilet paper holder. There was no proper storage for shower gel, just a shelf with a mirror covered in beard stubble. The shower drained badly, and there was no bath mat or cloth to deal with overflowing water. The washing machine was in a cramped room like a junk room, where the broom and mop were caked in dirt too. Even during the day we had to keep the cheap plastic floor lamps on, because the blackout curtains were just as filthy and couldn’t be pulled back.