Albergo Residence Italia Vintage Hotel

It’s difficult to know where to begin, perhaps the reception is as bad a place as any. Decorated with 1970’s fixtures & fittings, and manned as it was by a chap who eyed our group with a mixture of fear and suspicion, but also a dormant anger only just beneath the surface which, if you’ve ever seen Fred, Daphne, Velma and Shaggy pull their van up outside somewhere to be startled by a lone caretaker looming forth from a shadow telling them to turn back, would feel instantly familiar. The suites (and I use the word in its broadest possible term) were literally extraordinary; to be clear, the 1970’s decor is not a recent deliberate retro style choice by a playful interior designer, it’s simply that, well, it hasn’t been redecorated in 50 years. The bedroom had posters which advertised long forgotten people, events, bands and movies, each one more strangely troubling than the last, one of which (and I’m not making this up) showed a pencil sketch of a ghostly figure cradling the corpse of a naked corpse (please see images, though some viewers may find this upsetting). There’s more, each wall was peppered with switches, dials, knobs and levers which didn’t seem to have any effect on lighting, heating or ambience, with the exception being a bizarre “pulley” system which raised crude steel armoured blinds at the window. In fairness to the place, should someone decide to launch a rocket attack (I wouldn’t rule it out given the attitude of the man on reception), guests probably wouldn’t even hear it, much less feel the surely blessed impact which would cut a stay short. Elsewhere, in the bathroom the period tiles reminded me of those “Magic Eye” Autostereogram images which were briefly hugely popular in the 1990’s, whereby the viewer would relax their eyes and stare at a two-dimensional repeating pattern that hid an underlying 3D image; only when I looked at the tiles I couldn’t see frolicking dolphins or rainbows, I saw only the reflection of a 43 year old man with sadness in his eyes, let down because his colleague James regarded AN ACTUAL SHOWER as an unnecessary luxury. Finally to the breakfast room (which I’m certain was used as the set of the Korova Milk Bar in Stanley Kubrick’s “A Clockwork Orange”), and, such was their dedication towards the 70’s that even the pastries seemed to have been baked during Ted Heath’s premiership. A good croissant crumbles in the mouth to reveal a moist light texture within, a bad croissant crumbles in the mouth to reveal yet more layers of dry crumbly flakes - reader, they were like eating a crab shaped lump of eczema. This hotel served bad croissant’s. The final insult? Being stopped by the chap managing the breakfast room who pointed to a sign saying guests would be charged separately for taking food out of the diner - and I had had the temerity to try and take a banana with me as I got up to leave. Let me be clear, everyone does this in normal hotels, it’s an unwritten contract between guest and hotelier. Bu