This was our second visit to wonderful Madonna di Campiglio, which we noticed had changed quite a bit in five years, largely for the better. Last time we stayed at the allegedly 4* Savoia Palace - great location, good rooms, superb breakfast but fading round the edges and pricey. This time, the supposedly more modest Hotel Bonapace was our venue for the week. We were never quite why the Bonapace is only 3* - possibly one of the those quirks of ratings to do with numbers of lifts or type of hairdryers or something. The first impression, which does not fade, is how spotless everything is in the communal areas and this extends to the bar, restaurant and bedrooms. Arrigo and his wife run the hotel in a very hands-on, accessible way, and are generally very happy to help with restaurant bookings etc. We managed to negotiate B&B as half board always seems such a shame in Italy with so many fab restaurants around. I'm not convinced it was great value, but it was what we wanted. Consequently we can't comment on the quality of dinner, but breakfast was plentiful and very good, with a wide choice of breads, cakes, cheese and hams, eggs to boil, cereals, yoghurt, fruit, jams, hot and cold drinks etc. We found the waiting staff rather grumpy and humourless at breakfast, a bit ready to tell you off if you got something wrong, whilst curiously unaware that it doesn't look good to replenish the cereals directly from the industrial-sized catering pack right in the middle of the restaurant.

Our room was very large and comfortable, satellite tv, a big bathroom with bath and shower, and crucially plenty of hanging space for all the gear - we've stayed in supposedly smarrter ski hotels with far worse room facilities. The bed was comfortable and large. We had a lovely balcony with view over the town to the mountains.

The hotel has a heated boot and ski room just inside the main entrance where you can lock up your skis and poles and leave your boots on heated pegs overnight.

The real star of the Bonapace is Claudio, the self-styled "Crazy Barman" with his vast library of music, hand-catalogued by artist, album and track. He'll play anything you want, and distribute typed sheets of the lyrics for everyone to singalong with him - he ought to be on some kind of "Italy's Got Talent" really. He's also got great customer service skills and makes a killer Irish Coffee, and is just a really friendly jolly guy.

Our criticism of this otherwise very nice hotel, which they could fix if they chose to, is that an 8am start to breakfast is late in a ski resort, when the lifts open at 8.30, since it always takes about an hour to get out after breakfast. The other downside, which they can't fix, is that it's an awkward walk to the nearest lift (Spinale) although a ski bus stops very nearby, but sometimes it almost feels not worth walking to the bus stop when you may aswell walk to the lift. It's also a long walk into and back from the town centre, especially if you're carrying skis. That said, it's incredibly handy for some excellent restaurants - don't miss the dinner at the Stube Rosengarten next door (absolutely superb) and the Antico Focolare which is also excellent and very friendly, if you can bear watching the Russians being rude to the waiting staff and put up with their endless toasts.

Beyond that, Madonna di Campiglio is a wonderful resort, hardly any English people (a plus in my book and I am English), interestingly cosmopolitan now with skiers from Scandinavia and Eastern Europe as well as the local crowd - we heard 11 different languages on the piste. If I never skied anywhere else again I wouldn't mind as long as I could go there.