Hotel Giardinetto

The lake view rooms were lovely, but the rooms at front of the hotel are less desirable due to the noise of the traffic and rooftop bar.

An excellent hotel in a beautiful lakeside location on one of the smallest - but less crowded - Italian lakes. There are lots of facilities at the hotel including a Michelin graded restaurant (which was a bit fancy for us) and an outdoor infinity pool plus lake swimming if you were brave. We weren't! Pettenasco is a small town but has some excellent restaurants, a supermarket plus bars and specialist shops (e.g. a cheese emporium near the hotel) but is not jammed full of tourists. The lake boat service stops at the hotel and is great for getting around as the station is a pig to get to and from, especially if you arrive on the little shuttle train from Domodossola with any large suitcases. Our superior lake view room was spacious and well equipped with a massive balcony (Room 109). The staff are lovely, and very helpful.

This hotel was part of our Great Rail Journeys 'Italian Lakes' holiday. Nice looking hotel in a fabulous location. The Reception staff were lovely and very welcoming. We arrived at our room - the first disappointment! It was NOT a lake view, we benefited from a 'road view' and the road in question was busy, fast, noisy and almost on a level with our tiny balcony - if the balcony door was open it was impossible to hold a conversation in the room. In the evening, before dinner (in the hotel), we thought we'd have a pre-dinner drink on the roof terrace. Second disappointment - we arrived on the roof terrace, lovely views across the lake (which our room didn't enjoy), but no sooner had we strolled forward to admire the view, when a VERY rude bar staff member made it VERY clear that we were not welcome unless we'd booked! We were practically escorted out - outrageous! We had booked a hotel with a roof terrace with views over Lake Orta, and we were refused admittance onto that roof terrace. All we wanted was a pre-dinner drink, we'd already booked dinner downstairs in the restaurant. This was our first night, we had booked a single night prior to the arrival of our group, so we had dinner alone in a lovely part of the restaurant, great menu and nice food. The following day, our group arrived then things changed - Third disappointment - we weren't allowed to sit in that part of the restaurant, we had a different and not very inspiring menu and when the food arrived the portions were miniscule. There appeared to be just one cruit set between 4 tables. We were invited to help ourselves to salad, which was merely lettuce, tinned sweetcorn and tomatoes. On several occasions I awoke during the night actually feeling hungry!! Needless to say, we won't be hurrying back to this hotel.