Hotel Villa Ranieri - Naples, Italy 

We were really excited to return to Napoli. My parents are from there and this was there first time back in 10 years. First impressions was horrible. We could even see the entrance to the hotel because of mountains of trash blocking our way. The hotel was dark and smelled of mold. My father has respiratory problems so we only stayed one night. The hotel manager made a big issue out of our leaving and tried to get 4 days penalty charge from us before releasing our passports. We are still fighting it out today.

Lovely simple hotel, full of character in a relatively quiet area (considering Naples is such a noisy city!). Staff very pleasant and helpful. They booked our tour to Pompeii & Vesuvius and also a table at a recommended restaurant. Our standard room was at the top of the hotel, one of just two rooms on that floor. The room itself was very spacious, clean and nicely decorated, as was the bathroom. Breakfast was buffet style and quite basic, not a huge choice, but enough to fill up on! We were also pleasantly surprised at how reasonable it was priced (and Naples as a whole) including drinks. I had expected it all to be very expensive. Finally, take heed of the staff's advice not to wear any expensive jewellery as mugging is rife! Our friend has a Rolex watch which he didn't wear all weekend. Unfortunately when we checked out, he thought the safest place to keep it was on his wrist and he was mugged of it when we were on our way back to the hotel to pick up the taxi to the airport. We're convinced that the muggers were tipped off at some stage (we had been to the Archeological museum & to a restaurant for lunch) because they had it meticulously planned out. Luckily no one was hurt. I certainly wouldn't let this put me off returning to Naples, but you should be very vigiliant and leave the Rolex's at home!!