Hotel California - Rome, Italy 

Wow, this was horrible. The hotel's own internet site says that rooms have minibars and TVs. What a joke. Not only did we get a bare room with no TV, no minibar, no phone, no internet, but it also was missing fairly standard things like a means of egress! In fact, our room had no window, no ventilation whatsoever and that includes no heat, no AC. Our "double" room had a bed that was barely larger than a twin and we could touch both sides of the room. It was impossilbe to unpack because of the size of the room. It was impossible for two people to actually move in the room -- one person had to jump on the bed while the other moved around. Because of the lack of proper ventilation, there was an overwhelming stench in the room. The bed coverings were actually gross. I think there were hairs on the sheets which I am still trying not to think about. In the bathroom, the bath rug had dirt and blood stains on it. The toilet had pee and curly hair stains under the seat. I didn't dare touch the shower curtain to see what was behind it. All of the light bulbs in the bathroom had been removed, and there was no window in the bathroom either. The "hotel" is actually several hotels. "Hotel California" is the front which I suspect the high paid travellers check in through. Everyone, though, goes up the same lift and to the same floors. The different travellers who are going to the different hotels are then just directed to different wings of the same floors. It's hard to believe that other rooms of the other "hotels" could be worse, but they are definitely charged less because some of them have "hostel" in their name. You can also tell these other rooms carry a lesser charge because of their clientelle. The place is absolutely overrun with young teenagers screaming and running all over the place well into the early AM hours (at 2:30 AM, they were still at full noise level making it impossible to think let alone sleep). There is also another type of clientelle -- some sort of sad drunk who sits in his room yelling on the phone and/or perhaps fighting with another guest in the room. I guess what I'm trying to convey is that the noise level in the hotel is such that you cannot go to sleep before 3AM at the earliest, and you will likely feel uncomfortable the whole time. Also, does anyone know how the hotel star rating system in Italy is determined because if you go to other European web sites, this hotel is given 3 stars. That's impossible...the place is worse than every hostel I've stayed in while in Europe, it is NOT a 3 star hotel. So how did it get 3 stars? In fact, how did a place that has no ventilation nor method of egress even pass hotel inspection? Who paying off whom?