Hotele niedaleko Basilica di Santa Maria di Collemaggio, L＇Aquila

Not sure what to write about this hotel as it was a bit of a mixed bag. We were using the hotel as a base for exploring Gran Sasso National Park. The hotel has a bit of a feel of a US motel about it, being on a reasonably busy road, however, you can park one road back in front of the rooms and it's much quieter. On the day we arrived a car had broken down on this road and a large truck was parked there for the approximately 4 hours it took for 2 guys to load the car into a truck ! Unfortunately, other than a couple of almost useless leaflets, reception could provide us with little or no information about where to go in Gran Sasso, so we were on our own. Given the location, and the fact that it might make a good base for visitors to the park, I'd expect the hotel to be a little more helpful. Nice pool, however, the furniture around it was a bit battered and worn. I almost got the feeling that this was the first sunshine of the year and that nobody had thought that people might like to sit by the pool. The restaurant was good - we had some nice pasta dishes. The restaurant was really helped by the guy who, I presume, runs it. He was always helpful and friendly and made some really good wine recommendations. Breakfast was very good our first 2 mornings - the lady that served us was lovely and very efficient. On our final day, she didn't seem to be around, and breakfast descended into a bit of a farce. Some eggs (that I hadn't ordered) arrived cold in front of me after having been sat on a counter for 10 minutes (not sure why I was chosen for that particular treat). Any way, the breakfast kind of summed the place up. If you happened to get lucky and dealt with the right member of staff your experience was vastly better than when you encountered one of the more disinterested members of staff. Overall, a decent stay that could have been better. If TripAdvisor did halves it'd be a 3.5, but I'll give it a 4 based upon the nice room, the restaurant manager and the lady at breakfast.

The rooms are large and clean, some with balcony. Breakfast varies and plenty without limitations. Cute and ready staff to solve the problems of the clients. The only new to report is the location. The hotel description indicates a distance from the center of 900m. In fact, to reach the center there is a very fast rise with a turn of ca 500m. Otherwise, you need to take a much longer walk to reach the center.

This is not what we thought. We expected a great hotel, nestled at the foot of a beautiful national park. We got a cave dwelling in some scruffy sagebrush covered foothills. In the middle of a construction zone. With a cracked-in-half toilet seat. Positives: The staff is nice, service is good. The food in the one and only restaurant in town is quite good for both dinner and breakfast. The bed was comfortable. Negatives: There are nice mountains to the north of Santo Stefano— we saw them driving over from the Abruzzo coast. But you’d not know that from this location. The views from town are uninspired. The hiking looks fairly lame…no one is going to confuse this with the Dolomites. Our room was like a cave. Dark, claustrophobic, one small slot of a window. The door didn’t fit the door frame, so noise from everywhere came right through. Speaking of noise, the ‘bathroom’ was defined as the toilet/bidet/shower/ hiding behind a half wall, open at both ends. So everyone hears everything. The shower curtain didn’t reach the floor, so water splashed out all over the ‘bathroom’, and our toilet seat was broken in half. Charming. And you risk a concussion every time you brush your teeth and go to rinse and spit in the sink, which is under a concrete shelf. If you need to find something in the room, even with every light on, make sure you have a flashlight. The ‘town’ is the hotel, essentially. The staff member who checked us in and showed us to our room told us they were trying to attract more people to move there, make the town more like Pienza. Having stayed there, we’re not surprised to learn that this project is going, um, slowly. There is no reason to come to this town. Like, at all. Oh, and adding to all this charm were the not one, but two enormous construction cranes looming over everything. Which was enhanced also by all the scaffolding around (watch your head). No one is getting this place confused with Pienza. Conclusion: A nice idea, and we like their optimism, but ultimately a failed project. If you want a mountain experience, try Cortina. If you want charm, try basically anywhere in Tuscany. It’s not hard in those two areas to find great views, nice rooms, and toilet seats in one piece. There’s a reason you never hear about Abruzzo as a tourist destination,