We stayed here for a couple of nights coming back from southern Italy back to the Netherlands. We soon discovered that the area is brilliant!
The hotel is a three star hotel, nothing more, nothing less. For the purpose that we use hotels, a place to sleep, it was fine. Because there were no other rooms available the very friendly manager gave us the "mini suite" on the third floor with a large balcony overlooking the lake for the price of a normal room (€120). The view was brilliant!
The interior of the whole hotel is a bit 80's. However when you sleep thats not a problem and the beds are good. The downside of the room was the water pressure of the shower, took ages to wash my hair.
It has a pool, a three star pool, so don't expect anything fancy, just a place to cool of a little.
It has excellent parking facilities!
Then there is breakfast. I think Italians don't like breakfast. (I've had this in many 2/3 star hotels in Italy). And why is it that in a lot of hotels you get terrible coffee, when you are in coffee country #1? I saw the waiter throw back left over coffee in the big pot.... So skip breakfast and have a coffee and a sandwich in a nearby bar.
Having said that, the biggest downside of this hotel is Baveno. Nothing happens in Baveno and the restaurants are bad (trust me on this one). Do not even go to the #1 restaurant on tripadvisor Posta.
Everything happens in Stresa. Room rates there are higher. In my opinion there are 2 options:
1 Stay in Baveno and use your car to get to Stresa for shopping, dining etc. However with the vino at diner tough to drive back...
2 Pay a bit more and stay in Stresa....
Tips:
-If you are used to the Guggenheim and the van Gogh museum, maybe the Isola Bella museum lets you down a bit, only visit the garden! Or visit one of the gardens of one of the other big houses around the lake.
-The Baveno / Stresa side of the lake is the touristic side for foreigners. The public beach is very small, rest of the beaches is for hotels. On the other side of the lake, in Verbania there is a nice public beach with a real Italian atmosphere and a good coffee or corona bar, depending on the time of day!
-Hire a mountainbike at the gondala, go up and bike down, awesome!!!!
-The restaurant in the building of the gondola, cafe lidrovolante, has the best tagliata (steak with parmezan and rocket) I've ever had. I doesn't have the best atmosphere, but after a bike ride of a couple of hours a steak and a cold beer with amazing views over the lake is superb. If you read the reviews on tripadvisor on the restaurant: The chef will get killed if he serves a tagliata well done! So just order it!
At first I wanted to score this hotel very good, however while writing this review I discovered that it is not the hotel, but everything else that I enjoyed so much during my stay. Unfortunately for the hotel it is just average......