Villa Santa Barbara

The good; friendly staff, accommodating and helpful. Good room size, good WiFi, nice location near quiet cycle routes and centrally located for pretty Umbrian towns The bad; no restaurant on site (they had closed it for no apparent reason even though it’s advertised !). If you want any food you have to drive 15 minutes one-way. Nothing in the minibar, no on-site shop. Poor/average breakfast selection. No gluten free muesli, no oats. Decent scrambled eggs but you don’t want to eat that every day and the gluten free bread offered comes out of a plastic bag ? Rock hard mattress. If you’re made of metal that’s fine. Every one else will need a topper at least. There are no medium or normal mattresses in the hotel. Everything is as hard as a brick. Apparently the other tourists like it that way. Lastly, sadly the box hedges in the garden were all dead. Gardeners arrived on our last day to cut them down.

Exquisite visit This is an amazing property in a beautiful setting. So many kinds of plants and trees it feels like a private park. Our room was huge, as was the bath, with a very relaxing shower. Also a private patio overlooking the gardens. A special mention for Fabrizio who made dining each evening a wonderful journey. He recommended a Sagrantino wine that quickly made my top two wines of all time list. His dinner explanations made choosing easy. His service and expertise made an already fabulous stay even more special.

The property was beautiful, but in a very, very small village, so nothing to do here except a country road walk. The town of Trevi was a very close drive and a much nicer town than the super touristy ones nearby like Spello. I guess my big disappointment was that the hotel was almost empty. I was only staying one night and I asked for an upgrade to a room with a view towards the pool. The price they quoted me was significantly more expensive. Since the hotel was almost empty (I only saw one adult family my entire stay) and the cost to clean the upgraded room would be the same as my room, I didn’t understand why they didn’t just automatically upgrade me. I could see if it was a busy hotel or a busy night. The extra cost to them would have been zero but my memory and my feelings about the place would have been much, much higher. No, it’s just an OK memory instead of an exceptional one.