Hotel Louisiana

Not necessarily for the faint-hearted!

No three words sum up my first reaction to this hotel better than oh. My. God. The hotel is located on a quiet street to the north-east of Termini, and although that in itself isn't necessarily such a bad thing, the hotel occupies the upstairs of a restaurant which means that on arrival you are greeted by a marble staircase and a somewhat dilapidated lift.

The room wasn't ready when we arrived (I'm not sure what the official check-in time is, or if there even is one) so we had an hour to kill before we could check in. When we arrived back at the hotel over an hour later the room still wasn't ready, so after much frantic arm waving between the staff they found us another room. I'm sure the one we were supposed to have was palatial.

Don't get me wrong, it had everything we were promised, and was, at least in the most part, reasonably clean (although I drew the short straw and ended up with the bed with the mysterious black smear on the sheet). The place could just use a little refurbishment. The decor was worn and tatty. The wallpaper in the corridors was falling off the walls and mismatched. There were no obvious fire escapes.

Breakfast was the antithesis of spectacular, but no need to worry. If you arrive and there seems to be nothing to eat except jam, don't worry. Just wait a while and some real food might materialise. The breakfast room in fact had no roof, and looked more like a building site than any picture on the hotel web site. The drains were held together with tinfoil, there was plaster coming off the walls and loose cables hung from the ceiling (in the part where the ceiling existed). Don't drink the tea, either. And think twice about the juice. In fact, I would have happily given breakfast a miss altogether if only eating weren't a necessity!

The hotel's one redeeming feature was the receptionist who was an extremely handsome man, for whom I almost felt sorry. For this reason I would only recommend it to girls who might want to go just for him! (You'll know the one I mean!)

Unique Quality: Unique qualities? Outstanding characteristics? Ummm ... the reception man? 10 out of 10 for him, 2 out of 10 for everything else I'm afraid.