Hotel Limonaia

eandh

One week would have been enough 21st August 2008

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My initial disappointment with the Limonaia was that the rep at the welcome meeting didn’t move us to another hotel, such as the one in town that they held the welcome meeting at.

The Limonaia is an array of buildings built into the mountainside and largely facing south. Our room was up in the heavens, off a troglodyte council estate style corridor. It offered a spectacular view of the lake that anyone would be happy to tackle all of those stairs to see once, perhaps twice, in a lifetime.

The fact of our honeymoon was not reflected in any way further than that the single beds had already been pushed together. We did though receive a bottle of red wine in reception when asking for more of the tea style towels.

The room was made up daily, though this largely involved making the bed, spraying lavatory cleaner into the air (we saw this done) and tight fistedly auditing the toilet roll supply. Sometimes paper was removed, presumably when she thought that we had too much.

While the lavatory was excellent, the shower offered nowhere to put soap or shampoo. The electricity was only supposed to be available while we were in the room, although this could be overcome. The weak air conditioning was only available for two hours in the morning, another two at tea time and four more into the late evening. This could not be overcome but was sometimes overlooked.

The television had many channels, though only CNN and Eurosport were in English. This was probably fair as, judging from the car registrations and accents, the guests could have been from around a dozen central and north European countries. They were of every demographic aside from the larger lout.

The meals were surprisingly good, with meat and fish to help yourself to. Vegetables and salad were always on offer. It was though best not to focus too much on where particular foodstuffs had been recycled from. Unfortunately the mandatory two pasta starter could detract from the other courses. The drinks available at meal times were expensive but were not sold with the enthusiasm that used, or part used, crockery was removed. During one course two waiters tried to remove my bowl before my pasta arrived.

The hotel had no internet connection. The small and beverage-themed mini-mart was only open for one hour, twice daily. The indoor pool was entirely within a bar area, while the outdoor pool was only intermittently slightly green. There was much on site car parking.

Despite its appearance in the view, the town of Limone was close enough for a lazy fat man to walk to. The walk back up the hill was more of a struggle, best avoided by using the one Euro minibus shuttle service. On the other hand, the town itself was so far from anywhere not on the lake that Venice is probably easier to visit from Luton than it is on the excursion.