I consider myself a savvy traveler, visiting Italy 4 to 6 weeks each year. I also lived in Italy for 4 years and am fluent in Italian. I research each trip carefully and extensively. All the more reason for my great dismay at my arrival at Locanda del Lupo.
Firstly, don't believe their website. The hotel photos show this place without its ugly and real flaws - as it could be, as it should be, but as it IS NOT. You will not see the old, tired, neglected hotel it really is. The public rooms and bedrooms seem grand, elegant and laden with antiques online...but BEWARE. The hype on their website is mostly lies.
I made a reservation 3 months in advance requesting the "largest and best room available for a 6 night stay". What we received was a tiny, squalid, dimly lit room with no air conditioning. Soragna is in the Po River Valley and is well known, even in early June, for its uncomfortable hot and humid weather. I would never have knowingly chosen a hotel without air conditioning. Instead of antiques, our room appeared to be furnished by the "decorator" of a 1960's Budget Motel.The smell of sewage wafted form the bathroom from time to time.
My Italian began to improve as the reality of our very tacky accommodations became clearer. All of a sudden I was remembering words I had not used since living in Italy years before! My husband and I went down to the front desk, website room photos in hand. "This is the room we expected to get," I said, showing the photos to the owner. The very disinterested hotel owner, a woman in her late 70's, offered no apology or solution. After relentless insistence on my part, her more alert and empathetic assistant informed us that in 2 days, after the American bicycle tour group checked out, we could move to the room in the photo, which we did. This room was larger and was furnished with some lovely antique pieces but...
Had we been familiar with the surrounding countryside and not been exhausted, we would have (and should have) changed hotels. The air conditioning never worked. It was "under maintenance" for the 6 days we were there. Our (screenless) windows were open day and night which meant we shared our room with the local mosquitoes. And since we faced an inner courtyard, there was an endless cacophony of noise to endure. There was no room or hotel safe. The best they could offer was a metal box that would be locked in a room behind the office with our belongings. I kept passports and tickets locked in my suitcase. And there was an endless stream of American bicyclists, hardly a European tourist in sight. Even the highly touted (on their website) restaurant was dreary and unimaginative.
It was a very long and uncomfortable 6 days we endured at Locanda del Lupo.
- Locanda Del Lupo Parma
