Avogaria Locanda & Restaurant

AVOID - Please read why

I KNOW THIS IS LONG BUT IT MUST BE SAID!!!

Me and my girlfriend went to this hotel for Valentines Day and went on the strength of other peoples reviews, HOWEVER when we were first shown the room both me and my girlfriend were very disappointed!! Both of us felt that for what we paid for, it was grossly overpriced, given that the HOSTEL in Florence that we stayed in a week before was cleaner, bigger, had internet connection and it included breakfast and dinner and only cost us 35 Euros each night.

The tremendous disappoint was when we found an ANTS NEST in the room. One biscuit fell down on the opposite side of the room in the corner no way near a window and 10 minutes later there were thousands of ANTS crawling all over the biscuit. Then we decided to look around the room and we found out that they were also on the BED we were sleeping in. Immediately we called the waitress who came and took a look and called the manger, who said he will come within 30 mins. 2 hours later he finally decided to show his face and upon arrival he did not even address us and the worse thing is that he NEVER even apologised at all for the ants nest and told the waitress that she ‘you should not have called him for something such as this’ and left the waitress to continuously apologise to us. The waitress passed on a message from the manger (we found this to be poor service) even though the manger was standing behind her and could speak very good English that the ants had travelled approx 5 – 6 metres from the window to the corner of the room in 10 mins which is preposterous. Later on when they told us it has all been cleared and we left for an hour or so when they put powder down I discovered that the ants were still taking the crumbs back under the carpet where I found a hole which obviously is where the nest is and they claimed to have been ‘cleared’. Once I lifted the carpet I still found more ants still alive certainly they were not making there way from the window but from the hole. Our main issue with this is that we were not offered a change in rooms (there was 1 available at that time) and not offered any compensation.

One of the issues was on arrival to the hotel, we were told that breakfast was included by the waiter and so each had breakfast everyday. Again the breakfast was disappointment because it said it was full English breakfast but it only offered eggs and bacon with a few strips of bread with were approx in size 2 x 2 inches which is clearly not full English breakfast and certainly not big enough to make a bacon sandwich. Both of us ended up buying more food 1 hour later due to the fact that neither of us could fill up on breakfast. When leaving we were we were informed that we had to pay for breakfast. The manger told the waitress to get in contact with the waiter who told us that breakfast was included and if he had said that then he would have paid for it out of his money and it does not bother hi one way or another as long as he gets paid and while this was going on he was laughing all the way through. His attitude showed that he has little regards towards his staff.

The third issue was when we first used the shower head the metal cover came off as soon as we turned on the shower; clearly it was broken before we even got there. My girlfriend planned to tell the hotel staff as soon as we got dressed. My girlfriend forgot to tell them when we left (an error on her part) but upon return the waiter told us that the shower pipe had been fixed and that they insinuated that we broke it the waiter said ‘ OH by the way, we fixed the shower head’. We told him what happened exactly what happened and he said again ‘ well…..shower pipes down break that often, we fixed it a last month!! ’ again insinuating that we broke it. The next day the waitress also told us we had to be careful about the shower pipe and again we explained what happened and she was a lot more understanding than the waiter. I am not even going to go in to how the shower room was so dirty.

There was only ONE good point about this place and that was the waitress who was excellent at dealing with issues, serving breakfast and even small chit chat. With out her that place would be nothing.

When we paid the amount of money for this hotel, we expected higher standards than what was given. Also the manger deemed it appropriate not to apologise!! The manager I feel lets down the hotel with his attitude towards guests and his staff.

Our advise is those that wish to really enjoy Venice is to buy the Italy/Venice Lonely planet guide book and research the Hotels they have chosen and stay away from this place.

(Before we got to this place we travelled all around Italy for 2 weeks using the lonely planet guide book and it never failed us and the one time we did not use it was in Venice and all this happened)

Unique Quality: there is nothing good about this hotel. the only tip i can give you is look some where else.