I am going to leave as detailed and factual of a review of my nightmare of an experience as possible here.
What was supposed to be a vacation to paradise started like a nightmare.
We climbed 350 steps, saw a sign for Palazzo Talamo and knocked. A sweet couple came out, but it wasn’t the front desk. Overhead, we heard a cry that “check in is up here, you’re at the wrong door”, we look up to see the receptionist, who has not offered any help with our bags or even to let us up the elevator. Already up to a bad start.
We get to a lobby, the receptionist immediately tells us to close the door behind us, even though we are struggling to catch our breaths and get all of our baggage through. She then proceeds to try to turn off the a/c, to “help us not catch a cold”, although it’s the middle of the summer and we had just taken two flights, a bus, and a ferry to be there. We were like, please keep the A/C on at least. Other hotels would have given us water at this point.
The next 30 minutes felt like a timeshare commercial, where every excruciating fee was explained. Mind you, the room was $450 USD a night, which wasn’t cheap and we couldn’t care less if the water was an extra $3. To top it off, she explained that the “complimentary” breakfast was really just 1 item per person, and those items were divided by toast, and jam, so if you wanted both toast and jam, you would have to get your jam one day, and toast another.
What was extra creepy was, our room was literally the door right next to the receptionist, so she said “your room is just right there, nice and close” and followed us in to show us into our cramped room and stick the prices of the minibar in the fridge. At this point, we were like…okay lack of privacy and annoyed, but not the end of the world.
Once she left, I go to wash my hands and noticed a few ants, but didn’t want to make a scene so I just killed them and ignored the problem. We left for dinner and came back and there were a few more ants, but once again, not a huge problem.
The next day, we ate our “complimentary” breakfast and one of the yogurts tasted really bad, so we stopped eating.
We went to our day in Capri, and was super tired when we came back so was so excited to take a shower. Once we came back, we came home to an absolute nightmare: our bathroom was covered in thousands of ants. Our toiletries bags was a nest of ants, our retainers and retainers case had so many ants that we had to throw everything away. We immediately went to the front desk and he came in with a bucket of water and a spray to clean up the problem as best as he could.
We were exhausted and horrified that a room we had paid so much for and was so excited about in this “luxury” accommodation had such unsanitary conditions, so we asked to be moved to a room without ants. The guy said he had no other rooms available, and asked us to speak to the manager, who will be in the next morning.
The morning arrives, and our breakfast came with a moldy yogurt (see photo), which explained why our yogurt the day before tasted horrible. The ants problem came back, and we had had it.
We told the manager, showed her the photos, she almost dropped our phones out of horror, and came into the room immediately. Then, she asked us what we would like her to do about it since she has no other rooms to give us. We asked for at least a refund of the night we had to spend cleaning/killing ants, and she called us dishonest since she gave us a bed to sleep in. We were horrified by the treatment and meanness of the staff and the lack of professionalism displayed by the employees at Palazzo Talamo and will not be returning. They also implied that we “brought” the ants in our toiletries bag, and said they had “no idea where our bag came from”, which is beyond rude. We understand that ants are beyond either parties’ control, but the way they handled things was absolutely unfair, and totally not professional and I believe everyone should know that before booking this hotel.
