Delfino Hotel, Mestre

...we ended up at the Delfino which looked like a very reasonably 3* place that didn’t cost the earth.

The hotel is in Mestre which is a suburb just across the water from Venice, and as such is served by taxis and buses as well as a train station (there are no cars or other road-requiring vehicles on the main island because there are no roads). The bus from Treviso airport (the out of the way one served by Ryanair flights) stops at the ...
...if it actually stopped. My friends’ bus did but mine, the following day, didn’t choose to do this so I quickly discovered that the hotel is also a €15 taxi ride from Piazzale Roma, the main traffic hub in Venice. Had I known, I could alternatively have jumped on a local bus as the hotel is well served by these, but I didn’t know which number to get, I was hot and tired after travelling, and I really needed an ice cream sooner rather than later, so ... more

We booked a trip to Venice on a whim and a bit of a last minute whim at that. There were three of us travelling which is not necessarily the best number for accommodation, we were on a budget, and we were going in July, peak tourist season. In other words, we had to take what we could get. Venice has a huge number of accommodations but they do get booked up quickly and those that are left, one supposes, must either be hideously expensive or have something wrong with them. For this reason, we ended up at the Delfino which looked like a very reasonably 3* place that didn’t cost the earth.

The hotel is in Mestre which is a suburb just across the water from Venice, and as such is served by taxis and buses as well as a train station (there are no cars or other road-requiring vehicles on the main island because there are no roads). The bus from Treviso airport (the out of the way one served by Ryanair flights) stops at the station in Mestre on the way, which would be fine if it actually stopped. My friends’ bus did but mine, the following day, didn’t choose to do this so I quickly discovered that the hotel is also a €15 taxi ride from Piazzale Roma, the main traffic hub in Venice. Had I known, I could alternatively have jumped on a local bus as the hotel is well served by these, but I didn’t know which number to get, I was hot and tired after travelling, and I really needed an ice cream sooner rather than later, so a taxi it was.

The hotel is located on a main road but we didn’t experience any traffic noise. We did, however, notice the renovation works going on in the hotel during our stay. We were warned of this in advance, and signs were up in the hotel explaining the situation, but their promise of “minimal disruption from 10.30am until 5pm” was in fact an understatement, with noise starting from 8.30am several mornings. This makes a difference: by 10.30am I would hope to be on a gondola somewhere, or at the very least in the breakfast room, but 8.30am is still quite early for a holiday, and we were generally still in our rooms at this time.

Notice I said roomS there? We had booked a triple room but on checking in were presented with what the sign on the back of the door helpfully called a suite, but which I would have called a family room really. Either way we had much more space than we had expected – two twin bedded rooms connected by a hallway, and sharing a bathroom. For 3 girls, 3 suitcases and an obscene number of hair dryers and straighteners, this space was well received. The main room looked just like the photos on the website: two neat beds, a wardrobe, the usual bedside fixtures, a desk, a fridge (not a mini bar you had to subtly empty before stashing your own drinks) and TV (lots of Italian, CNN, ZDF (German) and, we discovered sadly too late in the stay, free porn if you scrolled high enough). My room was smaller and more sparsely furnished, just two beds and a chair, but still nice. My room was plain – white bedding, walls, no real decoration, while the girls’ room was wooden rather than white, and had the standard green bed throws we saw in other rooms we nosed into during the maid visits in the mornings.

The only slightly random part of our room was the shower room which didn’t have a proper shower base, just a nozzle on the wall, a non-slip mat over the drain and a shower curtain. Not fancy by any means, but nicer than most hostels (plus we didn’t have to share), and the rest of the fixtures, including bidet, were suitably new and shiny. The hotel provided plenty of free toiletries, but while they were ok for using there, they weren’t really ones you would want to steal (shower caps aside, the body/hair shampoo and soaps were nothing special). They were good at leaving towels though, and when we took some to the beach one day, they replaced the ones we’d taken with new ones, so we didn’t have to use sandy ones that evening.

Our room was on the 6th floor though because the hotel also had a mezzanine level this meant, on taking the stairs, you ended up trekking a flight extra than your room number would suggest. You could take the lift but they took ages to arrive sometimes, especially at breakfast, and on the couple of occasions when half of Japan seemed to have arrived in the lobby and were trying to squeeze in, it seemed sensible to go for the stairs instead. The mezzanine level was home to the bar and restaurant where breakfast was served. This was set to the extent that not a single item varied over our 4 days there. There were brown and white rolls, croissants and a loaf of bread to slice yourselves, cheese and meat, hardboiled eggs, cereals, fruit and yoghurt, crisp breads, rich tea style biscuits and various jams and spreads though they served faux rather than genuine Nutella. Hot drinks were help-your-self as were juices – regular and blood orange juice and a tropical fruit mix. I didn’t like these as they were too sweet and watery to be “proper” juice (more like the cheap nectar, or juice drinks you can buy) so I stuck to water which was also provided. It was by no means a bad breakfast, but by the end of stay we were rather used to the selection.

The hotel has no other facilities except for a luggage store, a 24 hour reception (where people spoke English but seemed to think I would prefer to be addressed in Italian. I didn’t), and an internet terminal we never saw anyone use. However I thought the hotel was well located. Getting in to Venice took about 15 mines on a bus which came at least every 20 minutes – either the 4 or the 4/. The busses were unbelievably crowded but air conditioned and really the only way to get in to town. The journey costs €1 if you don’t have a travel ticket.
If you wanted to explore locally, the centre of Metre was about a 15 minute stroll, down one road, so nice and simple. Metre had a much more authentic Italian feel than Venice and the evening and morning I spent there, dining and then shopping, were nice and relaxed. I shopped here because it had ’proper’ shops rather than just touristy ones – I went to the mini-mall and got some clothes for work for example. Opposite the hotel was a gelateria which was open late – we went there on the way home, at gone 11pm one night – and while no where near as fancy as the ones in the tourist areas, it served good ice cream none the less. Underneath the hotel was Pam, a supermarket, which stocked all the basics if you wanted to self-cater or, in our case, just grab some bottles of water. They did, however, have the slowest serving staff in the world, and a trip in to get a couple of items could take half an hour.

As I said, we booked very close to departure, but still got a good deal. The first night, before I arrived, the girls paid £55.10 for the twin room (mine was locked until I arrived since we’d paid for 1 night at a twin rate, and 4 nights at a triple rate). For the four nights I was there, we paid £205.20 in total, or just over £51 for the room per night (we got a 4th night free offer, hence why it averages out cheaper than the twin). For a hotel – rather than a hostel – for 3 people, and with breakfast included, that seemed very good value. In fact the whole holiday was good value – including flights, taxes and 4 nights accommodation, I paid less than £100 for our short break.

The hotel is recommended but the low price comes at a cost in the form of the location – we didn’t mind the commute but if you want to be right in the action you will have to pay quite a bit more to stay within sniffing distance of the canals.

http://www.hoteldelfino-mestre.com/en/index.htm

We booked through Hotel Connect from a Quidco link – it was the best rate, and I got cashback. Win-win. 

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