Hotel Delle Palme - Lecce

Good hotel hidden in Lecce. It's a few minutes to walk to the castle downtown, but it is an excellent price and a nice hotel. They claim it's a four-star hotel, and while it might not be, it nearly is. And unlike other high end hotels, the internet was free! (signal wasn't very good, depending on where you were).

The welcoming was among the worst I have ever seen. The guy at the reception desk took my passport, gave me the key and that's it. I had to ask what time the breakfast is server and where. He pointed with this finger to the restaurant and told me the time when the breakfast would be served. I asked how long he would need my passport to complete the registration formalities and got a vague reply among the lines of "Only a few minutes". I asked for a map of Lecce. He handed me the map without opening it or showing me where we were on the map - and started to read his papers without pay any attention to me! That is extremely rude. I opened the map and asked him where on the map we were. He said that the map is just of the old town of Lecce and we are outside of the map. When I insisted he reluctantly made a mark on the map saying we were a little bit outside of the map from that point. The bad service continued the following morning at breakfast. The breakfast was not what I would expect from a four star hotel, the quality of the items served was two star quality. I used the buffet and asked the lady in charge of the breakfast service for coffee. She pointed me to two pots marked C (for coffee) and L (for milk). However, I noticed that Italian guests were offered a choice of freshly made coffees (espresso, cappuccino). The worst bit was when I was checking out after my 3 night stay. They handed over a transaction which they had carried out over the internet the day before without asking me or informing me. It was the charge for the first night. They had used the credit card details I had given to Venere when making the booking and used the 3 digit security code from the back to do the transaction. That really made me worried about internet security. The hotel is a 25 minute walk from the station.

This is a good-sized hotel and very traditional in design. They deal with large tour groups very well.