Abbazia San Faustino Residenza d'Epoca

We had booked five nights half board at this hotel to celebrate our Golden Wedding Anniversary and my wife's birthday based upon previous reviews and details on the hotel's website, unfortunately the stay did not turn out as we had anticipated. The drive to the hotel, which is in a really rural setting ,was fine twisting and turning with wonderful views but then the unmade road started. It was over a mile or so long and was very badly rutted and potholed, particularly in the steep sections - not good news for a car with sports suspension and the danger of a puncture was always imminent - not a good start. We had kindly been upgraded to suite and were offered a choice of two but neither were really what we had expected from the website pictures - the furniture was antique but very tired, windows and shutters didn't fit properly, lighting levels were very dim and there was a distinct lack of suitable power points to charge devices etc. The bathroom in the suite we chose was very small and a bit smelly and the shower cabinet was tiny so you could hardly turn around in it plus it took fifteen minutes for the water to run just warm and then the water went under the ill fitting door and started flooding the bathroom. We went down for dinner to discover that we were the only guests in residence so there was not much ambience in the dining room and the menu had limited choices (as some dishes were not available) and only one dessert was on offer for the whole of our stay. We were expecting 'rustic' Umbrian dishes but the food was really only just passable and poorly presented, not at all like the pictures on the website - very disappointing. The next morning I spoke to the on-site manager (using Google Translate to overcome the language difficulties) and we were offered a move to another suite which was better as it actually had two bathrooms with modern walk-in shower units which worked well enough with actual hot water but being on two levels we had a great deal of difficulty moving suitcases up a very narrow spiral staircase. Breakfast was limited as we were the only people there although it did improve when more people came to stay at the hotel but the dinner menu never changed and after three nights we had we had run out of dishes which we would have chosen. On an interesting note, the on-site handyman, who tried to do something to improve our original shower unit, also appeared to be the chef! So certainly not a four star hotel and certainly not four star service - our room was never serviced, cups and saucers from our first night never collected and wet towels never changed. After three nights we decided we had had enough, made our excuses and checked out after paying for a partial stay and incurring a €150 'penalty' for early check out. So the moral of the story is to check out all the hotel reviews (on reflection most of the good ones were from guests who had been at weddings here which they obviously do well) and don't always believe t