Hotel Antiche Mura - Sorrento, Italy     

The Hotel Antiche Mura was a great pick for our one night stay in Sorrento. We arrived by car, and the hotel was clearly sign posted from the main square. The hotel is beautiful, and the room was very large. The air conditioning system was fantastic after being in the heat at Pompei in July. The hotel breakfasts was one of the best we have experienced, with an incredible selection of pastries unlike I have seen anywhere else. The location is absolutely perfect, being just right up the street from the main square. We were able to walk there in the evening, and also walk from the hotel to the ferry dock for a trip to Capri. Highly recommended!

The hotel is in a good location if what you want is to be close to all of the shops, bars and restaurants in the centre of Sorrento, but is certainly not up to the standard of a four star hotel as far as I am concerned. It is within walking distance of the harbour, as well as the bus and train stations so is well placed if you want to go on excursions. As regards the hotel itself, it is clean but our room was small for the price paid, and on a sign on the back of our door was actually priced at ?45 less than we were paying. Re the 'hydromassage shower' which our room supposedly had - the water pressure was so low it was hard to have a shower at all, it was a trickle, no hydromassage was going to happen in that shower! Our room and bathroom was kept spotless by the chambermaids but they were perhaps overly enthusiastic - the constant moving of personal items was slightly irksome - we were constantly looking for our stuff! We did have ants in our room which wasn't pleasant and we were disturbed two mornings in a row by a member of the cleaning staff coming into our room while we were still in bed, despite having the do not disturb sign on. In terms of the rest of the staff, we found 4 members of staff friendly but the rest were decidedly unfriendly. One particular member of staff treated our efforts to speak Italian with disdain and was really quite rude which I must say is unusual - I have usually found Italians very encouraging in this respect. We noticed that older guests at the hotel were received substantially better, which lets face it is probably par for the course but when you are spending a considerable sum to stay there you expect to be treated well by all staff members regardless of age bracket. As a guest in a Hotel, for me it is not acceptable for the front of house staff to inspect me from head to foot every time I walk in or out of the lobby! A bit unnerving. The pool area in the hotel was nice but was overlooked by a residential apartment building which was a bit odd - the view was often peoples washing drying on their balconies. In terms of the food there is no restaurant in the hotel so only breakfast and lunch can be eaten there, which is fine as there are so many restaurants surrounding it. Breakfast isn’t great - the usual continental selection along with eggs, (soggy) bacon and hot dog sausages - nothing special. We ate lunch there a couple of days - the sandwiches are nice but if you are looking for good pizza the hotel is not the place to get it - the pizza I had was terrible. I would say that the staff do give good advice as regards which restaurants to go to etc and did not steer us wrong in that respect. They do seem to sell the organised excursions hard - we were only ever told about them and not given any information about travelling independently - we had to visit the tourist office to get this information. All in all the Hotel Antiche Mura is ok but had no atmosphere and did not live up to expectation at all. The staff members who were friendly and provided good service (when I say good I mean ordinary - nothing above and beyond) unfortunately couldn't make up for those who were below par.