Hotel Due Mari

The whole team gave us a lovely welcome and were very friendly. I got back late for breakfast after jogging, but they still let me in and made me a delicious meal. There’s also a rooftop terrace with beautiful views. Thanks to everyone on the team, it was an amazing summer.

The location is the one good thing here. Staff at both the front office and restaurant were unfriendly and uneducated. Breakfast was a joke, just dry Italian pastries. It felt like an insult to Italian cuisine. The room was the worst part. It was 25 degrees outside during the day, but unbearably hot inside because the air conditioning didn’t work. The shower wouldn’t drain, and the bathroom turned into a sauna afterward. This place may have been great 50 years ago, but nothing seems to have changed since. Even the maids wore old-fashioned maid costumes.

We paid about $500 a night, and I expected five-star quality. Instead, the room was tiny and the fan was broken in summer. It took more than three days to get the front desk to understand we weren’t making it up. The “aircon” was just side fans in front of the heavy curtain, so it was useless. The bathroom was mouldy and unacceptable. At night we had to wedge a shoe against the side of our door. Any vibration from other doors opening made ours shake. The breakfast buffet looked nothing like the website photos. It felt like eating in a morgue, with only the fridge motor audible. Getting a coffee took sooo long even when the buffet wasn’t full. There were ridiculous rules around gym and outdoor pool opening times. On holiday, people want to swim when they want, especially on hot evenings when the sun sets at 9pm. It would have been nice to swim until at least then, and to use the gym first thing, say at 6am or 7am, instead of having to wait. This hotel was such a waste of time and money. It’s a two-star hotel at best, more like a hostel, and it’s so old and antique it’s time to close.

The internet was poor, which was a letdown. The hotel itself is beautiful, with old-style furniture and a lovely garden with a piano and swimming pool.