Certosa di San Giacomo, Lauro

Checking into the Certosa on September 10, 2004 should have given an indication as to the rest of the stay - the person at the front desk was very pompous - did not offer to lower the gate, did not offer help with the bags. We went to our room and found that the view was terrible over a work area...as there were very few cars in the lot we asked to have our rooom changed to one with a better view - we were told immediately that there was not one available. We decided to walk to the exercise room - which looks like a messy store room, and then to explore the pool...Although we saw arrows to the pool we could not find it and went back to the front desk where we encountered Mr. Pompous whoi told us to follow the arrows. We finally found that you could get to the pool through this poorly organized back area - quite a distance from the pool itself. It would have been better to put a lock on the gate to have guests be able to open rather than have them traspe through the construction site. Dinner in the restaurant had excellent service but an overly affected menu and a chef who truly should have lived in a monastery on bread and water. It was expensive, tasteless and lacking in imagination in presentation and flavor. Then of course the wedding in the courtyard began - unfortunately this area is beautiful and not soundproofed so one heard the music til past midnight. On Saturday the bath or shower was an experience, no real shower, no water pressure, the hotest was barely warm, no body lotion in the bath, no tissues, no conditioner...was this place put otgether by the monks? We went to breakfast that was an array of leftover pastries and poor quality sweets, nothing healthy, no yogurt, sliced fruit - this hotel can take lessons from the Accor or Jolly...The staff was friendly but this could not make up for the poor quality of food. Use of the pool was impossible as there was a lot of local area burning - we hopped in the car knowing that we would not dine at the hotel in the evening. Saturday night had another loud wedding that kept me up with another poor shower on Sunday, breakfast that was even worse with good service. Sunday night not only had a loud wedding, there were speeches, yelling, cheering, the people in the next room called to complain, we called to complain.. On Monday, we dealt with the shower, bad breakfast and had the experience of checking out - I asked for a reduction fo the room rate as we were greatly disturbed, the person was on the phone for quite a while arguing with someone and I hoped he was negotiating for us. He was not - he said there was no discount.

You should not recomend this hotel - it took away from a wonderful stay in Italy.