we were so excited to be going to rome, having not been abroad for nearly 5 years since having our daughter, We picked hotel la mela having found it on a holiday website then looking through other websites, The pictures looked great, huge room, lovely reception and bar, and it had 4 stars, Compared to other hotels at the same price it looked fantastic and only 20 mins from the centre of rome! well..........20 mins my backside! Firstly u have to wait until the hotel shuttle (car) is available to take u to the tube station.....then once at the tube station add another 15-20 mins to find and queue behind a ticket machine that is working! All the while getting tutted and huffed and puffed at by locals in thier annoyance at your ability to use the ticket machine then its 20 mins on the tube into rome!

Anyway the hotel room itself is not bad........the room we got was about half the size as the picture the hotel uses as its advertisment But it was very clean and the breakfast was quite nice, coffee, selection of juices, cereals, croissants, rolls and preserves, Although we were gobsmacked to be charged 4 euros for a coke! airconditioning is absolutley not worthy of being called airconditioning! more of a fan that looks like air con
that circulates the hot air around the room! Also no hot water in the morning or the evening, we managed a hot shower the day we checked in at 2pm and that was it. The Location of the hotel is awful, it is just off a very busy main road, very noisy! The view from our window was on a dirty industruial estate with the road just behind it.

We didn't find the hotel staff helpful at all and felt we were bothering them when we asked for the shuttle car to the station, There was one receptionist that we only saw once that was very friendly, the others were NOT!
We were told if we wasn't back to the station by 9pm we couldn't get the shuttle car back to the hotel , we threw caution to the wind and decided to stay out late and then a taxi from the station cost us 15 euros for the 3 min trip!
Also the tube from rome into anangina stops running at 10pm which we wasn't told and we ended up getting a night bus back to anangina which took an hour and then we had to get taxi back to the hotel!
After speaking to other travellers on the way home that had actually stayed in the heart of rome we learnt that thier hotel staff had bent over backwards in trying to help them find thier way around and nothing was too much trouble. At the la mela there are no offers of excursions/ daytrips..........not even any leaftlets of things to do.

I feel disappointed at our choice of hotel and feel we should have realised that a 4* for the same price of a 3* in the centre of rome was for a reason. we don't even feel that the la mela was a 4*

If anyone reading this is thinking of booking this hotel...i would strongly advise u to take on board what we have written, if someone had been as honest as us i would definatley have thought twice!

On the plus side my partner proposed to me at the trevii fountain while we were then and i said YES...........so not all bad!!!!

P.S i will be adding photos very soon.