Residenza Cavour

The apartment shown on the website looks quite different from what you actually get. We paid €100 in mid-September for what felt like an old student dorm room, and using the kitchen costs another €25. The ventilation from the Zara store next door runs all day and night, so sleeping was impossible for us. For four people, someone has to use an old blue sofa as a bed. Getting the key means walking 1 km to the Novotel at Parma Central Station. Checkout is still at 11 am, even with that walk of more than 20 minutes to sort it out. What seemed like a nice stay at first turned into an expensive, horrible experience.

It's clean and in a great spot, but the interiors are nothing special. There's a €20 charge to use the kitchen, which makes it hard to see this as self-catering if it barely saves you money. Check-in is at another hotel, though the transfer is free.

You get a whole apartment to yourself, with a big fridge and freezer and a stovetop, but hardly any kitchen gear. There isn't even a dish towel for drying things. If your apartment faces the street, you'll hear all the noise from outside. It only starts to quiet down around 2 am.

The location is great, but I felt misled and ripped off, and staff seemed complicit. Check-in and checkout are at Hotel Astoria, 1 km away. That detail is buried in the address, so you have to read closely to spot it. The €20 kitchen fee only gets mentioned when you arrive at the kitchen. Parking is a long way off, and the answers are always the same: it's downtown, being in a restricted car zone is a privilege, the extra kitchen charge is for cleaning, and there's a shuttle. For me, that shuttle was fictitious because it only runs at certain hours. This could have been good if I hadn't felt fooled.