This is not what we thought. We expected a great hotel, nestled at the foot of a beautiful national park. We got a cave dwelling in some scruffy sagebrush covered foothills. In the middle of a construction zone. With a cracked-in-half toilet seat. Positives: The staff is nice, service is good. The food in the one and only restaurant in town is quite good for both dinner and breakfast. The bed was comfortable. Negatives: There are nice mountains to the north of Santo Stefano— we saw them driving over from the Abruzzo coast. But you’d not know that from this location. The views from town are uninspired. The hiking looks fairly lame…no one is going to confuse this with the Dolomites. Our room was like a cave. Dark, claustrophobic, one small slot of a window. The door didn’t fit the door frame, so noise from everywhere came right through. Speaking of noise, the ‘bathroom’ was defined as the toilet/bidet/shower/ hiding behind a half wall, open at both ends. So everyone hears everything. The shower curtain didn’t reach the floor, so water splashed out all over the ‘bathroom’, and our toilet seat was broken in half. Charming. And you risk a concussion every time you brush your teeth and go to rinse and spit in the sink, which is under a concrete shelf. If you need to find something in the room, even with every light on, make sure you have a flashlight. The ‘town’ is the hotel, essentially. The staff member who checked us in and showed us to our room told us they were trying to attract more people to move there, make the town more like Pienza. Having stayed there, we’re not surprised to learn that this project is going, um, slowly. There is no reason to come to this town. Like, at all. Oh, and adding to all this charm were the not one, but two enormous construction cranes looming over everything. Which was enhanced also by all the scaffolding around (watch your head). No one is getting this place confused with Pienza. Conclusion: A nice idea, and we like their optimism, but ultimately a failed project. If you want a mountain experience, try Cortina. If you want charm, try basically anywhere in Tuscany. It’s not hard in those two areas to find great views, nice rooms, and toilet seats in one piece. There’s a reason you never hear about Abruzzo as a tourist destination,
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