Hotel Le Tre Vaselle - Torgiano, Italy     

We booked this hotel looking for a little luxury at the end of our week in Italy. The pictures on the website of the Pool area with the hills in the distance attracted us. We left after one night. On arrival at the hotel we had to walk along underground corridors with the light turning on as we walked and noone in sight until eventually we reached a lift and this took us above ground again to the reception. Had we been directed to the front door by the signs this would have led us to the reception much more simply. On checking in we were then led back underground through the interminable corridor and then after going through another room back into further corridors to eventually find our room. On the plus side it was a suite not booked by us with a bedroom sitting room and spacious bathroom with an amazing jacuzzi set up. On the minus side it was right on the road on the ground floor. Then we set off in search of somewhere in Torgiano to sit and have a drink but there is nowhere it is a very sleepy unexciting town. Back to the hotel and the corridors, we changed and went for a drink before supper, thinking it would be nice to find the pool pictured on the website, up the corridors to reception and then back down them and lo and behold there was another underground corridor to go down before we emerged to find the area pictured. Lovely but it seemed unkempt the tables dirty and noone there, the pool attendant had brought us from the reception and served us drinks, the glass of wine asked for by my wife came with a half pint plastic tumbler and as a half bottle, we were told we could bring the bottle back to the dining room for dinner. Back up the corridors to the restaurant where there were a few tables occupied, the hotel was virtually empty, it seems to be a conference hotel and so as there was no conference on had very few people staying which didn't help its attractiveness. No complaints over the Dinner good food nice wine, formal service. Breakfast the next day was massive, a huge buffet but again noone there to eat it, seemed a terrible waste, a simple continental style breakfast served at the table would have seemed more appropriate. This is not in my mind a tourist hotel though when I said that they got very indignant. It is comfortable and the food is good and in the Winter the underground corridors and lack of anywhere to sit out for food and drink wouldn't matter so much, but there are many much nicer hotels around and so we returned to our previous hotel to escape turning into moles.

I landed here with a tour group and spent two nights at what I consider an average hotel -- more accurately, a bed and breakfast. I say average because it had most of the faults of European hotels: dim lighting in the rooms, lack of amenities, weird bathrooms, etc. In fact, as I read other reviews here, I can't believe we stayed at the same hotel. Maybe other reviewers had better rooms than I. I will give very high marks to the quality of the food and wine, and to the views of the Umbrian countryside. But the rooms were not comfortable and the bathroom was a large shower stall. That's right, when you took a shower the water got all over the bathroom because there was no shower curtain or shower cubicle. The whole hotel was dark and dingy and -- being an old wine cellar -- labyrinthian. And if solitude is what you want, well the town of Torgiano is in the middle of Umbrian nowhere. Thankfully, our tour took us away from this uninspiring place during the day but at night, you'd better love Italian tv, because the bedside lights are far too dim to read by. I was happy to depart.