Ambasciatori Hotel, Mestre

.../> All in all the Ambasciatori provided a reasonable good value experience given we had a three nights for the price of two deal, in a very clean well appointed hotel, nice bar and restaurant as well as good rooms, and for a day in Venice this is a great way of doing it. Mestre itself though, doesn't have a pretty part that we found anyway, so be prepared to commute.

The only criticism I have is that my baby got really dirty crawling ... more

I've just come back from a three night stay in this hotel, which is situatued in Mestre - a sort of suburb near Venice. Having never been to Venice, I really wanted to visit, but travelling with four meant hotel rooms are not cheap and hotel rooms in Venice are especially not cheap. So this hotel provided an excellent solution - a few kilometres outside Venice itself makes all the difference to affordability, and clearly Mestre is working on this principle as there are a lot of hotels there.

ROOM

This one, the Ambasciatori, is four star, and we stayed in what they call a suite. First point - it's not! It is a nice large executive double with a queen sized bed and a walk in wardrobe but it does not have a separate sitting room, so in my book it is not a suite. It has a sitting area in the room separated from the bed by a lattice screen, but that doesn't count as a separate room does it? What it did have, rather extra-ordinarily, was a separate shower room with toilet and sink as well as a full sized bath room with two sinks, shower over the bath, loo and bidet. Nice big sort of twelve/fourteen feet square bathroom, all white suite, marble counter, tiled floor etc. Great. Hubby and I could both shower at the same time. So a suite of bathrooms then.....

This nice non-suite cost us 190 euros a night but they did three nights for the price of two, so it worked out well. They had a cot (which actually we ended up putting in the walk in wardrobe as it was large enough and had a window, so at least baby and we had a bit of privacy). They charge an extra 20 euros for an extra bed, though the cot was free. A standard double room at that time (July 2008) was 140E I think.

SERVICE

Housekeeping was excellent - the room was always beautifully tidy and there were tons of towels, enough spare pillows etc and blankets to spare and all carried out unobtrousively. Good minibar and not stupidly expensive (5.50E for half bottle of Prosecco, for example).

Excellent bellboy help on arrival and parking right outside the door helped ameliorate the impression left by the grumpy man on reception, but other staff were friendly - e.g breakfast and dinner waiters etc. We arrived in the restaurant at 9.28pm, having telephoned in advance to say we would be in before they clsed the kitchen at 9.30pm and were met with firstly a request to eat only cold food from the anti pasti buffet, but when pressed they produced a plate of spaghetti and two steaks and were polite, but refused to cook chips, for example, as the kitchen was closing. Not overly impressive when a bottle of wine, a bottle of water, a glass of milk and the aforementioned steaks and spaghetti came to 72 euros.

FOOD

Breakfast was very good - bacon and eggs, cakes and pastries, loads of lovely fresh fruit and a fresh fruit salad, yoghourt, bread, hams and cheeses etc., and cappuccino or espresso available as well as caffe latte.

Dinner was also good quality, and an acceptable price for a hotel restaurant (e.g. pasta dishes at 14-18 euros, steaks at 14 euros - and they were enormous - and pleasant wine at under 20 euros).

LOCATION

The really good thing about tihs hotel is that the bus stop right outside taking you right into the Piazzale Roma on the edge of where traffic can go in Venice - the buses came really regularly (in less than ten minutes), only cost a euro and in ten minutes had you queue for the vaporetto to start your experience of Venice proper. Obviously if you can afford it it is great to have a hotel right in the heart of Venice which looks onto the Grand Canal but this is really good alternative if you value your comfort and like or need large hotel rooms.

I was very happy with the ease of access into Venice, and there is a good supermarket right next door to provide a few useful things to avoid having to charge too much to the room (like nice bottles of wine for 2E/3E) Mestre is not a picturesque place though, and quaint little tavernas for dinner didn't exactly spill onto the pavement at you, but they certainly do in Venice, and bus runs til late into the night. If you are arriving by train the station is on the main line from Milan to Venice and is a five minute walk from the hotel (OK ten with luggage!), or an inexpensive taxi ride.

SUMMARY

All in all the Ambasciatori provided a reasonable good value experience given we had a three nights for the price of two deal, in a very clean well appointed hotel, nice bar and restaurant as well as good rooms, and for a day in Venice this is a great way of doing it. Mestre itself though, doesn't have a pretty part that we found anyway, so be prepared to commute.

The only criticism I have is that my baby got really dirty crawling on the bedroom carpet, which was clearly not cleaned as regularly as the hard surfaces. That, and the bar shut at 11pm, which I though was too early! 

...less