B&B Balon

We went to Italy last month, traveled for a couple of weeks and stayed in several different hotels and B&Bs. This B&B was our least favorite, by far. In fact, the sole purpose of this review is to make sure that others don’t find themselves in a situation similar to ours. From the very beginning, I’d like to mention that the owner of the B&B was very nice, welcoming and helpful in providing tourist tips about Turin. Also, the apartment itself was more or less OK – it most certainly could take a good round of thorough cleaning (the light switchers were so dirty that we couldn’t even touch them before cleaning them with hand sanitizer!) The WiFi signal was really bad, most of the time we barely had a connection. Breakfast was a muffin; there were also some cereal, milk, tea, coffee, jam… The apartment we had was with a “river view”; well, it was indeed on the river side, but we found nothing picturesque about the view. To be fair, though, those were not the things that really put that B&B at the very bottom of the list for us. As they say, “location, location, location”... While looking for a place to stay in Turin, we needed a property that had parking (we had a rental car). So, we knew that we’d be looking at properties not exactly in the city center. But nothing prepared us for what we actually saw. This B&B is located in a dirty, rundown multiethnic neighborhood, far away from the city center and tourist attractions. We are used to use public transportation when we travel but we couldn’t find anything convenient close by. The closest Hop On Hop Off stop is on the central square which is about 30 min of rather unpleasant walk through dirty, smelly streets... Personally, we didn’t feel comfortable walking around the neighborhood after dark and had to take taxi from the city center back to the B&B at night (so add another $15 euros to your expenses). As a note -- we found that the actual building where the B&B is located seemed new, felt quite safe and secure with controlled access (gate and fence around it). We thought that this property may be better for someone who comes to Turin not as a tourist and is looking for a cheaper place to stay and doens't care much about the location and the surroundings... We will most certainly not stay in this B&B again and will not recommend it to others.