Vila Astoria

Incredible!!!

The rooms are spacious and the location is very good, just 3 minutes from the resort center. But the place feels generally neglected. The plasterboard partition walls offer obviously poor soundproofing, and the plumbing has unpleasant odors. Heat only came on after evening phone calls, and then only for a few hours until the tourists fell asleep. There weren’t enough towels, the bed linen was very poor quality, and security was lacking. The price was excessive.

My much-awaited mini-vacation turned into a nightmare. I paid 140 lei a night for a single room without breakfast, but when the night temperature dropped to 8 degrees, the room was colder than outside. The shower ran out of hot water while I was still using it, apparently because the boiler wasn’t large enough, and the bathroom drain was clogged so water covered the tiles. The only person I could speak to was the maid, who was also acting as plumber and receptionist. At 7.40 AM on departure day she knocked on my door, then at 9 asked for my key under the pretext of cleaning. When I came back at 12 AM, my luggage was at reception. Choosing this place was a big mistake. Three stars? A blatant lie!

I’d stayed at this villa twice before and everything had been okay, but the basement rooms are a joke. There’s mold on the walls and damp everywhere, including the carpet. Even in summer it’s extremely cold and drafty, and the room is dark. The windows are tiny and their jambs are too high to reach, so you can’t air the room out. They don’t close properly, and neither does the bathroom door. We had to drag the beds to the middle of the room to avoid getting sick. The towels stayed damp and wouldn’t fold, so we had to dry them with a hairdryer. There were only four hangers for three people, and the bathroom’s small windows meant we couldn’t air that out either. The smell was so bad we desperately used room deodorizer on the first day to avoid being overwhelmed by it. Bathwater wouldn’t drain off the floor at all. Street noise was unbearable, along with the train whistles. During the day, a bus passing blocked the little light that could get in through the miserable windows and made the room go dark. At night, headlights from passing cars lit up the whole room because the window is right beside them. The blinds were moldy and the Wi-Fi didn’t work, although the password was still posted on the door. Horrible.