B&B Tramonti del Sud

What stood out most was how attentive the staff were. After our long trip, we were welcomed with a basket of fresh fruit, and the owner shared lots of useful ideas for enjoying our holiday. The room was spacious and comfortable, cleaned thoroughly every day, with fresh bath linens daily as well. Breakfast was varied and high quality: local fresh fruit, organic yogurt, and warm croissants every day. The cream-filled one was my favorite. We’ll definitely return.

Torre San Giovanni is about a five-minute drive away, with good bars and restaurants. There’s a pebble beach about 50m from the house, though only a few places give direct access to the sea. We rented the whole house for three days because the listing mentioned a shared kitchen, but there wasn’t one available, or it was locked away. The rooms varied in size: three upstairs, reached by an internal staircase, one on the ground floor with its own outside entrance, and two more in the basement. There was no shared indoor room, just a cheaply put-together outdoor space. When we arrived, half the room fridges weren’t working. The intermediary was somewhat helpful, but the owner, who lived next door, wasn’t helpful at all. Workmen came in during our stay to install something, and after that we had no hot or cold water, right in the middle of a shower. At checkout the owner tried to charge us for damage to the garden table, a cheap plastic one like the rest of the outdoor furniture. We’d checked everything when we arrived, and the damage was already there. I don’t know how many people he tries this with. We were glad one of us spoke Italian and could handle the language barrier and what we saw as the Italian “mentality.” None of us plans to return or would recommend the rental. For what we paid, we could easily have booked a hotel with breakfast and room service. The property is also described differently across several booking platforms.

“You don’t find the true Salento spirit.” I’m replying to the owner of B&B Tramonti del Sud after reading his response to my review. I had said the property was new, while also describing the problems I ran into. Rather than address those points one by one, he called me rude and didn’t apologize for the website saying Wi-Fi was available when the reality was different. The review called “Salento Spirit,” apparently written by a close friend of Paolo, helped confirm one point I’d made: he asked us to pay for the entire stay in advance, including the rainy day. That review didn’t mention how briefly but inconveniently we were left without shelter at the hotel when it rained. There were also breakfast problems I left out of my first account because I worried readers might not believe them. Croissants don’t sit well with us, so we usually had a slice of apricot tart and yogurt, plus a few pieces of toast. We quickly learned that asking the manager for another slice caused a problem. We put up with that for six of our ten days. Then on the seventh morning, four days before we were due to leave, Paolo said the apricot tart had run out and only pistachio tart was available. We told him we didn’t like pistachios, but there was nothing else, no fruit, cakes, or donuts that we ever saw, so we had toast and the usual jam instead. He didn’t apologize. The next morning he again offered only pistachio tart, so once more we ate toast and jam. We told him we were annoyed with how breakfast was being handled, but he neither apologized nor offered to fix it. The same thing happened the following day, with only pistachio tart on offer. Even our cold, unfriendly response made no difference. On our last morning we decided to eat at a bar in Torre San Giovanni. Paolo happened not to be there when we told his mother we wouldn’t be having breakfast at the B&B, and explained our dissatisfaction. Half an hour later, when we got back, his car was in the parking lot, though it hadn’t been there before. I aired all my complaints to his mother before we loaded the car, hoping Paolo would come out. He stayed inside and left his mother to take the full force of our angry words. She wasn’t responsible for what her son had done, and I apologize to her now. THINK, PEOPLE, THINK

We had a really nice stay. The welcome was lovely, and even though it’s a little outside the center, you can walk to everything: the supermarket, a bar, a pizzeria, and the beach. We’d come back and recommend it!