a week in Villa Marianna
Submitted: May 6, 2013
Stayed: April 2013
We have just spent one week in Villa Marianna (end of April - beginning of May 2013). The house is very comfortable, apartments well equipped and the location really beautiful. It is quite remote but this is what we wanted and so we liked it. The host - Laurie is a nice and helpful person.
Our companion occupied apt. E, apt. D and apt. A. The other 2 apartments remained empty so, in theory, we had the house for ourselves.....Well: almost for ourselves.
On the 2nd night of our stay we found out that, apart from the 5 apartments, there was also a kind of restaurant in the same building located beneath the ground floor. From time to time people come here to have a family reunion or other type of parties. During our stay (7 days) there were 2 dinners and 1 long lasting lunch and on all the 3 occasions it was really loud and the whole area became more similar to a "piazza " in a nice italian town rather than to a quiet agriturismo we had hoped for. There was no information about this restaurant on the web page when we were making our reservation and this is why we were really disappointed.
To compensate us for this bad surprise Laurie invited us to one of the dinners. It was very nice of him and we do appreciate it, especially that the food was really good. However the fact stays the fact: nobody told us about the restaurant in the premises when we made our enquiry about the rental and we decided to stay in this property far away from any town because we wanted to have a quite place with no parties!
To summarize: we would love our stay in Villa Marianna if it had not been disturbed 3 times by the restaurant guests. We would consider coming back, preferably in a summer time, if we were sure that the restaurant would be closed. Otherwise we would rather look for a different place.
Owner's Response: Everything that our guest has said is correct and fair. However, it should be noted that, while we do have restaurant facilities at Villa Marianna, from June 1 to Aug 31, we ONLY offer lunches AND ONLY to our guests - NO local people allowed and NO dinners. At a time, when the villa is most occupied, we are concerned to retain the tranquillity of the villa.
However, outside of the busiest 3 months of June, July and August, the villa is never fully occupied; and, because it is a mountain villa, we have found that, up to now, guests who have stayed there in quiet periods have found it rather too quiet and have often asked to move into Spoleto for a bit of life. If you are on your own, while you are perfectly safe, it can be a bit much to be in a huge detached villa, on your own, or, almost on your own, especially at night time. So, we decided that if there was an occasion for our chef to use the restaurant for local events, by appointment only, then, we thought that it would bring a bit of welcome life to the villa in such a quiet environment!!!
Indeed, when the above guests arrived, we waited for the usual phone-call to ask if we had anything available in town. And, when we didn't receive such a phone-call, we believed that maybe the fact we had provided the possibility of "more life" at Villa Marianna had done the trick !!
Certainly, in this case, we were guilty of a total error of judgement.
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