La Vista di Marina by the First

DO NOT STAY HERE photos shown are not what you get. “Luxury Penthouse Apartment “ was anything but. 55 steep stairs with no handrails only rope to pull yourself and luggage up. No cooking equipment even though it was supposed to be an apartment. You couldn’t stand up properly on mezzanine floor. Dangerous electrics! Save your money and stay elsewhere.

WORST EVER PLACE TO STAY IN ITALY. SOLD AS A LUXURY PENTHOUSE APARTMENT BUT WAS FAR FROM THAT. 55 STEEP STAIRS WITH ONLY ROPE TO PULL YOU UP (NO HANDRAIL). YOU COULDN’T STAND UP ON THE MEZZANINE FLOOR. COULDN’T COOK IN APARTMENT AS NOT ENOUGH EQUIPMENT. LIGHTS & OUTLETS SPARKED, VERY UNSAFE. PROPERTY MANAGER WAS VERY RUDE AND AGGRESSIVE. DO NOT BOOK THIS PROPERTY AS PHOTOS ON WEBSITE ARE INACCURATE.

This is a joke, 4 flights of stairs and our partial seaview is of a wall of rocks. They don't answer their phones, ever, and someone from a pizza shop finally came and gave us a key. They have very bad FaceBook reviews. Our travel agent booked us here and clearly didn't check it out. Rooms is very very small, stairs are steep and the hot water for the shower is also dangerous; goes from cold to boiling hot. NO ONE answers the phones either. Do NOT STAY HERE.

STAY AWAY. I had a reservation booked for June 2024 with this property. The reservation was based on 100% cancellation and I was only to be charged 30 days before arrival. The owner of this property rental decided to charge my card five months ahead of schedule for the full amount and refuses to give me my money back. I used *********** to make this reservation and I’m still getting the runaround from them on how long I have to wait to get this money back. Do yourself a favour stay away don’t book with this person. She’s a thief and illegally charged my visa without authorization.

This is a nice modern flat with a comfortable bed and spacious bathroom. I think some of the other reviews mentioned that the access to the apartment is by very steep, narrow set of stairs, 3 or 4 stories. So, any heavy suitcases would be awkward to get up to the flat. But, this is Cinque Terre and it is ocean front, so the reward is the view. Sadly, in our case, the view was obstructed due to work being done on the flat during our stay. It was very disappointing and I asked our contact (all contact via WhatsApp), about the situation and the reply was that 'it was supposed to be finished in early April'. I understand that work on these old buildings must be done but, I told the contact, that, in my opinion, we should have been given a heads up and offered a discount or the chance to cancel and rebook somewhere else. I requested a discount to reflect the situation and the lack of communication. The response was negative. I told the contact that I would need to mention this in the review and the reply was 'don't menace us with reviews that's really a barbarian behaviour'. When your host is 'anonymous', and you pay in advance, you don't have much power. I am attaching some photos. My 1 star review reflects the lack of communication and the aggressive comments. If the balcony had been useable, I would not have had any complaint.

Do NOT recommend this property on your website EVER again!  Very dangerous property with no lights on 3rd floor with very dangerous steep steps and his remedy was use our flashlight on our cell phones. He didn’t care about safety which should be, above all, your #1 priority! He was very rude on the phone and belittled me by telling me “I need help for everything don’t I? You can’t do anything yourself can you?”  All I did was ask a couple basic questions about the check in process, where the little black box with the room key was (lost in translation) with his instructions, and he kept talking over me with insults! Very bad hotel to client run business owner! Please for the love of GOD, do NOT ever recommend this property EVER again! I sure as hell won’t! Thanks in advance.