Hotel Villa Paradiso dell'Etna - San Giovanni la Punta, Italy     

We were staying here for a second time and again enjoyed our stay. The property is a charming Sicilian villa with views of Etna to the rear. There are pleasant gardens with palm trees and swimming pool. There are plenty of areas to sit in sun or shade. Great for relaxing or as a base for touring. The hotel puts on a fair number of functions such as birthday parties and first communion celebrations but we did not generally find that these interfered with our comfort. The hotel is tricky to find. There are several set of instructions on the web which are confusing. Coming from the airport, take tangenziale in direction of Messina/Taomina. Take the exit immediately after San Gregorio and immediately before the ALT station, which is labelled Paesi Etnei. You have to cross two lanes of traffic which are attempting to merge from the right. Follow the slip road and come to roundabout. At each roundabout , follow signs for Viagrande. You will pass Il Portali and Le Zagare commercial centres. Eventually reach roundabout with right fork to Acibonaccorsi but continue towards Viagrande. Hotel is 400 yards up from roundabout on the left. Be warned that Sicilian driving is very scary for UK drivers and priority at roundabouts is variable.

We booked this hotel because it was listed in Frommer's Sicily guidebook as being close to the airport. What a joke. We arrived at the Catania airport late in the evening, our flight from Rome having been delayed and our luggage lost. (The luggage service at Catania airport said the next day "Your bag is probably here and it is probably not here." Later they said they had lost it. We went to the airport the next day, and it was sitting right there with about 10 other "lost" bags. Apparently the lady was not inclined to simply look at the name tags on ten bags.) Anyway, it was about 10 p.m. when we started to find this hotel, using the directions that they provided us, which consisted of two sentences, one of which said "Follow the yellow signs to the hotel." Well, guess what, there were no yellow signs to the hotel. We drove around and around in circles looking for yellow signs, and there were none, at least none you could see at night. The area was totally shut down, no one on the street to ask. Our GPS unit was sending us in even more cicles. Finally we pulled into a self sevice, unattended gas station. By now it was 11 p.m. and the whole area was deserted. A guy pulled up in another car, and we asked him, in our faulty Italian, if he knew where the hotel was. He seemed to tell us he would go with us, and we declined. He clarified that we would follow him, so we did, following him down about 20 different winding roads, alleys, etc. until about 15 minutes later we arrived at the hotel. We would have NEVER found it without the help of this good Samaritan. When we arrived at the hotel, we picked up their brochure. It had the same 2-sentence description that had been emailed to us. This is the EXACT description as Frommer's had - in other words, Frommer's did not verify that the hotel was close to the airport - it just accepted the faulty information provided by the hotel. On our way home, we chose a hotel that was INDEED close to the airport - 5 minutes away. It was a dump but at least it did not misrepresent its location. The hotel was quite nice. The night we arrived late, we were kept up until 1 a.m., however, due to a 18th birthday party in the garden. We had jet lag and this was not a welcome thing. But the front desk staff was very nice, and we forgave this. The hotel itself is quite lovely and we would stay there again now that we know where it is!