Hotel Astoria Restaurant - Pompei

We arrived early but were immediately made to feel comfortable and given coffee. 30 minutes later we were given the room we ordered, a family room for 4, (one double and two singles). Nice, clean. Bathroom was provided with towels and shampoo etc. Probably needed a bit of an updating, give it 8/10. We used it as a base to get into Naples. Really friendly staff, enough English to help us. Wanted to make our stay comfortable. The local station to the hotel (8 mins) only have hourly trains and they take 1.5 hours to Naples. A better station is Pompi Scavi, the trains are every 30 mins and the journey time is 35 minutes, taking you to the main station in Naples. In the end we got a cab from the local station to Scavi, (€10). Train fare is €2.40 per person for a 140 minute ticket.

Everything perfekt, expekt: the staf couldn´t speak english.

Clean, quiet, easy to find. Free parking a real bonus in this part of the world. Good location close to one of the entrances to Pompeii Scavi. Owner gave us a ride to the main entrance so we could go one-way through the ruins. A really friendly and helpful family runs this hotel!

First things first : the owners, essentially mom and dad, and two kids, are extremaly kind and very helpful. The rooms are essential. Clearly this hotel is family-run, not professionals. Breakfast is essential, but if you ask for something that wasn't made available and they have it they will happily provide it. I repeat, this is a family, not pros, so they mainly don't have a clue, it's not bad will. Room price is a little expensive for what you get, but this is Pompei. Also, never eat in Pompei, all the restaurants in town are there to rip one-time-only tourists off. Go to Naples and have a real good meal or pizza.

Les plus: personnel très serviable: nous ont emmenés gratuitement à l'entrée du site archéologique. Parking très pratique. Grandes Chambres les moins: Chambres très sobres sans charme. matière des serviettes de toilette semblable celle de torchons de cuisine....

Webpage description offers "free wireless internet". It was out of order. No explanation given. No one there spoke even one word of English (I have spent over 4 months total traveling in Italy, EVERYONE in the hospitality industry, everywhere, speaks at least a little English, except at this hotel). Website description says that credit cards are accepted. They were not. A typed explanation in several languages was shoved in front of me explaining (sort of) that their phone lines were down, so credit cards were not accepted for 4 days. The hotel was empty, and the paper was well worn, so I suspect that the "4 day" "phone outage" was more like several months and counting. At checkout I had to walk over a Km in the rain (really) to find an ATM to withdraw cash to pay them. While I was at the front desk, the phone rang a few times and the teenage clerk was surfing the web on the PC. Clearly the internet and phones were fine. There is a wall mount AC unit in the room, but it is controlled at the front desk, and you have to really ask to have it turned on. Even so, it turned off after 20 minutes or so, not enough time to cool the room. A joke. Penny wise, pound foolish hotel operation. The hotel was recently renovated (my stay 6/09) and construction materials/ spilled plaster, etc were there to be stepped over and around in public areas. In the bathroom every soap dish, sink surface, etc is scarred with cigarette burns. We had a triple reserved, but there were only towels and pillows for 2. The third bed only had a small sofa type throw pillow as a pillow. Had to ask several times (in Italian) to get towel and pillow before they were brought. We checked into room #10, but were given a key labeled "#12". It worked regardless. Got a replacement key for room #10, it was identical to the other key (an old style Italian skeleton key). It seems that every room has the same key. So much for security. "Color television" has a 12" screen.