We expected a 3 star and paid 130E for our last night in Italy. The web sites we checked assured us the hotel was 3 star, had wireless internet throughout the 'entire' hotel (Booking.com) and was air conditioned.
The beds were the most uncomfortable and noisy (creaked loudly with every movement, looked like home built wooden boxes with a thin mattress on top) I have ever experienced in a hotel, the room was tiny and the TV even more minute. There was nowhere to put anything in the equally minute bathroom. The air conditioning had been turned off two weeks earlier, we were told, and internet was only available in an office adjacent to the front desk.
When we arrived in Rome by train we called and were assured that if we took the appropriate trains we would be picked up from the Ostia Antica train station - just call and let them know we had arrived. No mention was made that there are no pick ups between 11.00am and 5.00pm. We might have discovered from the web page, but we didn't, and we did have their assurances. We arrived around 3.00pm and called and they told us which bus to catch. That left two no longer young retirees with heavy bags (one recovering from knee surgery) to negotiate a horrendous footbridge with long flights of steps, narrow unmade edges to the road and an anxious period as we tried to find out which direction we should be going in. We lugged our cases onto the bus and when we got off we had to cross one of the most dangerous roads I have encountered.
We arrived at check in and there were two men and a woman behind the desk. After seeing the poor standard of our room I went downstairs to express my dissatisfaction. I was informed by the young man at the desk that he was unhappy too, it was a standard twin room and there was nothing to be done! He explained that no one could pick us up because he was alone at the desk - not my observation - that the air conditioning was not broken, it had been turned off, that there was no wireless internet in the hotel. His attitude was 'smart' and unhelpful.
We are pretty seasoned travelers. We were fuming about the pick up debacle, but more importantly don't understand how this hotel could ever have been given a three star rating. For a two star, it was OK.
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