Badiula

It is a little distant location if you think of Catania - but closer to the airport. 2 nice pool areas. Breakfast is buffet style - and quite OK. Staff is helpful and attentive. We missed possibilities for making tea and coffee in our room, we also missed glasses for water and wine. We think that this is below expected standard for such a hotel.

We stayed for one night on the 14th of August, and there was an event taking place. We could hear the music in our room until 2 a.m., which has left us feeling very tired and disappointed this morning. The receptionist mentioned that in Italy, people generally go to bed very late.

Firstly, as soon as we arrived, we ended up in the middle of a pool party. Apparently, there are two pools, the main one is for public, and the small one is for guests. Noise was being heard from everywhere, even the rooms as they aren't sound insulated properly. For this reason, we decided to go to the beach instead as we wanted to relax. To make it worse, the next day, after a day trip, we decided to go for a quick swim in the pool at 5.30pm, only to find the pool gates closed! We asked the receptionist, and she told us that pools are closed between 12 and 2pm and open until 5pm only! I've visited a number of agriturismo hotels and I never went to a place which had such limit for pool usage. To be fair, if this place is not used for parties, weddings and other events, it is a nice place and quite fit to be a good agriturismo hotel. With the current staff, management, and events ongoing, I cannot call this agriturismo.

Firstly we were given the disabled room with strange high toilet and extra large washbasin. The shower doors didn't close properly and leaked all over the floor. Although it was a dark room with no windows just shutters on glass doors we could have lived with it apart from a noisy pump in the adjacent utility room which started up EVERY 2 minutes for about 10 secs. This kept us awake most of the night. How does the management expect anyone to sleep through that? I have a recording if anyone doesn't believe the noise. We were moved the next day across the courtyard to a larger room with upstairs. We had used a voucher from 2 years ago and I got the distinct impression we had been given the overflow room. So, secondly the WiFi didn't work. I immediately complained only to be told it would be looked at. It wasn't and I complained again the next day. This had impacted our planning of where we were visiting and eating etc. Finally someone made the necessary changes on the router/server and it worked. Never before have I seen people queuing to get into the swimming pool which opens late and closes a couple of hours for lunch. The breakfast was basic, very basic. You wouldn't starve that's the best I can say. It doesn't help when you see the waiter scraping together the spilled muesli and putting it back in the dispenser. My evening meal the first night was a really good dish and based on that we decided to eat there the second night. Well it was inedible and tough. A completely different meal, different quality ingredients and different chef. It had to be sent back. The replacement was marginally better but I gave up on that as well. Regarding the token unmanned bar good luck getting anyone to serve you there. In summary this was by far the worst of 4 places we stayed at. I could not recommend it.