Hotel Villa Maria

I really really enjoyed my stay at Villa Maria! The hotel was about 10 minutes walk from the bus station (you could either walk up the stairs from the town area or hire an electric car if you have a lot of luggage). My room was on the second floor with a balcony area shared with other rooms on the same floor. The view from the balcony/hotel was absolutely stunning. There were also some sun lounge chairs on the balcony for guests to use and areas to hang your washing/clothes. As the hotel was quite high up the hill, it was really breezy which was nice. The hotel is family-run, and everyone there was really nice and friendly. They'd always meet you with a smile, and have your needs met! Have I mentioned about the food? Well, the food at the hotel was really really good!! I didn't plan to, but I ended up having all my dinners at the hotel as the food was so good (I think I had three plates of starters one night). I would say it was the best food I had had during my entire stay in Italy. I also did some yoga lessons with Sabrina, which took place on the roof terrace of the hotel. Listening to the sounds of the waves, overlooking the ocean and coastline, what could be a better setting for yoga practice/meditation than this? As it was my first time doing yoga, Sabrina really made sure the lessons were suited to my level/needs. She was really flexible with the timing of the lessons too. It was such a good first experience of yoga, thank you so much!

We upgraded from a double to a family room as a treat as the photos of the family room looked very large with three beds. When we arrived we were shown to our room which did not look like the photos. It was very much a similar size to a double room but we had paid 300 more as a treat. When explaining this, the woman who showed us to our room was not apologetic and just left us in the room until the owner arrived. We were not told anything about the facilities in the hotel, the times of breakfast or dinner and other genera things you would expect to hear. When the owner arrived he just said its a very nice room and it was the family room so eventually we had to adjust but I felt very cheated out of money as for the same price we could have gone to the hotel nearby that had a pool and spa included. The balcony was also shared with the rooms next door which wasnt specified on the website. We felt that the staff at breakfast were very nice and friendly and attentive but from the room situation, the owner appeared unfriendly to us. We had to ask to have our towels changed and some more toilet paper on the 4th night and for the money I would have expected this to have been changed daily. The owner was taken aback when we asked him for this. Our two single beds were also not changed the entire time we stayed there and I felt these are basic things you expect in any hotel. I never write negative reviews but we really felt let down by the small room and lack of friendliness from the owner and we felt we were cheated out of our money.