We booked our stay at Albergo Asnigo directly via the hotels website and found that the responses were quick, polite and very informative.

We arrived for a 7 day stay for the 2nd week of our honeymoon in Italy, we took a bus from Como train station and then a taxi up the mountain to the hotel (do get a taxi up there, it will take you forever to get there on foot with heavy luggage, costs about 10 EURO) we checked in with very little fuss and to a very warm welcome, the staff instantly recognising our surname and congratulating us on our wedding which we found very warming.

We made our way up to the room where we were immediately drawn to the balcony and the most stunning views of Lake Como, the mountains and all the hilltop villages, we were really taken aback with the beautiful scenery just outside our window that it was a good hour before we noticed the very kitsch decor of the room itself.

As idylic as it sounds there are always usually drawbacks and we found plenty with this hotel mainly due to noise and quite a bit of it unnessecary. The hotel itself is quite compact and we were above and to the side of 'La Terrazza' the hotels restaurant, the noise coming from a busy kitchen was understandable, we got over that quite quickly, but the most annoying thing was the waiters clearing up after dinner, dragging tables and chairs accross the patio at gone midnight to set up for breakfast the next day and if that wasnt bad enough it was done again very early the next day, this happened everyday and we werent imagining it, basically your sleep was dictated by the laziness of the waiters who couldnt be bothered to lift the furniture, we felt that this was disrespectful to everyone staying there as it was very loud.

Going on to the restaurant, it was only available to us 3 nights out of 7 (it is always closed on a Monday) due to various events, weddings, kids parties, coach parties etc, the food itself is very tasty and is worth dining there at least once but we found the presentation of the food a bit over fussy, breakfast also was delicious, a vast, good quality selection of bread, meat, cheese, cereal, fruit, yoghurt, pastries etc, if you do stay here then it would be advised you find out well in advance as to when you can actually eat at the restaurant as you may be disappointed to find out that you may have to venture out to find something to eat, as the hotel is quite remote.

The position of the hotel itself is worth mentioning, right on a blind bend in a narrow road, be prepared for cars to sound their horns to warn other they are approaching, it does happen quite alot during the day and night.

As I mentioned before, the decor in the room is quite dated but that didnt concern us too much as we had the wonderful view from our balcony, there were other problems with the room itself though, the air conditioning unit didnt have a remote control, apparantly you have to request one, when we did the unit was about as much use as a chocolate teapot due to the positioning of it, high up on the wall, bearing in mind we were on the top floor and the temperature was mid to high 20's, all the air conditioning did was to keep the ceiling cool, we soon abandodned that idea and resorted to more traditional methods of having all the windows open to create a through air draught. On our 4th night the sattelite receiver inexplicably stopped receiving, we mentioned this down at reception and they seemed to think that it hadnt been working for days even though it had only just stopped, strange, one other point of note is that 2 days out of 7 we had been out and arrived back at 4p.m only to discover our room hadnt been made up as the maids were only just getting round to it.

Special mention has to go to Fabio and his team at reception, we experienced impeccable courtesy and manners by them and they were incredibly helpful to us in explaining things to us, printing stuff on the internet for us and generally making us feel very welcome.

Our conclusion is this; do stay here, it has the most amazing views of Lake Como if you are lucky enough to get a room with a balcony and the staff are amazing and very friendly but dont expect total peace and quiet, be prepared for everything I mentioned before, we had an amazing experience here and it certainly didnt spoil our honeymoon in anyway, we just found the place unexpectedly and unneccessarily noisy.