Hotel Le Macine

Fontanelle beach, just below the hotel, was one of the prettiest we visited. The hotel also makes a handy base for exploring Salento’s coves, with the Santa Cesarea thermal baths about a ten-minute walk away. There’s free parking on arrival, though some people sometimes use it without permission; the alternative is a paid lot behind a gate. The lobby has classic furnishings and traditional Salento touches, and smelled pleasant. Reception, especially the women at the desk, were welcoming and offered useful advice. We had a spacious, clean, functional superior quadruple room on the basement level by the pool. The style was dated, and there was no safe, but it had lots of storage, air conditioning, a small fridge, and a little terrace with armchairs and a clothesline. The bathroom was dated too, but worked, though it could use a refresh. The pool was just average and hard to care much about with the sea right below. The restaurant is run separately. Our half-board plan included buffet breakfast and a two-course lunch or dinner, with a choice of seafood or meat and water included. Breakfast was mostly packaged sweets, with little savory food, almost no fruit, and a queue for hot drinks. Lunch and dinner suited us well for both quality and variety. Service could be better: the staff were kind and helpful, but seemed too few for the number of guests. The value was good, especially for the location, if you mainly want a base for visiting beaches.

The staff were really pleasant and courteous, and the hotel is a short walk from both the lovely sea and the thermal spa. It’s classed as three-star, but felt worth more. The well-kept pool was a nice touch, and breakfast was included and more than enough unless you’re expecting five-star service. The price was fair. Rooms were clean and met safety requirements. A simple, pleasant place for a holiday, and I’d happily return. Thank you!

The location was the main upside: the sea is about a ten-minute walk away, and there are restaurants and bars along the street. Internal parking costs €5 a day, though it’s often full. The floor in the room was stained, but it was still cleaned, and that’s a point in its favor. The dogs could stay in the room during breakfast, and the sun loungers were available whenever we wanted. I spent €600 and came away feeling I’d wasted it. The photos of the rooms and pool, plus the dog-friendly website, made the hotel look appealing, but room 49 was awful. It smelled musty, the bathroom and toilet smelled of sewage, as if the drain were blocked. A cord for the light above the shower was held against the wall with little antenna-hook nails. The plug was round and wouldn’t fit the wall socket. The shower hose was rigid and wouldn’t stay in its wall holder, so water went everywhere and I had to hold it. The wall mounted hairdryer’s bracket was loose, and it would fall as soon as I touched it; it also hit the power button and stuck out. The toilet was stained with rust, and the tank never filled even after flushing. When I turned on the bidet’s cold tap, rusty-colored water came out. Both sink faucets made a sound like a ship’s siren under pressure. The bed had a double base but two single mattresses, and I kept waking up sunk in the middle. The terrace was nice, but the adjoining terraces meant I had to fit a railing I found leaning against the wall, and it sat crooked because it didn’t fit properly. The pool had no lifeguard, so you had to open the umbrella yourself. There was just one sign at the entrance saying when the pool was open, but people did as they pleased. In the week I was there, I saw someone tape off the pool perimeter only once. We were told the bar and restaurant belonged to a different company, not the hotel. At breakfast, when we asked for a macchiato, the bartender brought a mini cappuccino filled right to the rim, delivered with his usual precise spoon and saucer. The food wasn’t any better. By 7:30, just half an hour after the buffet opened, half the food was gone. Whenever the waiters replenished it, we had to ask. For savory food there’d be one tray with a row each of salami, cheese, and the last of the cooked ham, with bees flying around it, plus one basket of sliced bread.

The location is great for walking down to the sea, the veranda was lovely, and the pool was fine. The reception staff were friendly, and at first glance the hotel and room seemed okay. Fortunately, I was only there for one day, using a coupon I received (good life in Puglia). The bathroom looked stuck in the 1970s, with no window and a broken vent. We found spiders in the room and had to get rid of them by throwing towels. Dinner was included, but when we arrived at 8:30 pm, there were already two little plates on our table: tuna slices with cherry tomatoes and olives, with flies around them. We could choose a first or second course and picked the second, described as baked calamari gratin. What arrived was boiled calamari with tomatoes, awful and like boiled meat. We ate it because we were hungry. Why call it gratin if it’s boiled? Even as a seafood salad it would have been bad. I’ve never eaten anything like it. Breakfast was okay, all things considered, but the cakes had no glass covers and flies wandered over them. You had to ask for missing items, the tables and chairs were dirty, and the bar waiter was a bit grumpy. They should take another look at how things are run. I won’t return, and I hope I don’t get another coupon for this place.