A La Gallarie — Hotel in Niagara-on-the-Lake

My wife and I arrived on a Friday for our two night stay at A La Gallarie. We had told the owner we would be there between 8:30pm and 9:30pm as I was arriving on a flight from Calgary. ||||We happened to make good time and arrive at 7:30pm. She met us at the door with panic in her voice: "I've been trying to call you. I tried your work numbers, your cell numbers and couldn't reach you!" Thinking there was some sort of emergency, we asked why? She said, "I want to go to the Friday Night Fish Fry. Here's your key." She quickly showed us to our rooms, and gave us no further orientation. Off she was gone like a flash. Very strange. ||||My wife and I went and had dinner and returned to the A La Gallarie at about 10:30pm. The house was completely dark. We went in quietly and went to our room. We walked into the room and it was over 90 degrees. Like walking into a blast furnace. There was no AC coming through the vents. There was no fan. There weren't even any face cloths we could dampen to help deal with the heat (it had been 37 degrees that day - a record!) ||||We suffered through the night. Couldn't sleep. Sweating like crazy. The next morning, I spoke with the owner and told her, "we were VERY uncomfortable last night. Our room was over 90 degrees the entire night. At a minimum, we need a fan and a couple of face clothes for tonight." She replied, "no problem, I will make sure you have all that." ||||Well, off we went spending a wonderful day going from winery to winery. We then had a 7pm dinner and returned at 9:45pm at the house. We went to our room to find a note on the door. The note read, "gone to get you a fan, will be back by 10pm." Well, 10pm came and went. 10:30pm came and went. 11:00pm came and went. 11:30pm came and went. By this time, we had given up and just went to sleep (or at least try to sleep). at MIDNIGHT we heard this knocking on our door. Scared us wide awake. My wife answered the door and it was the owner. She said, "do you still need a fan?" Was she serious we thought. My wife said, "uh, yeah..." The owner said, "ok, I will go try to find one." It's MIDNIGHT! We waited and waited and waited. She didn't return. We had given up a second time and went back to bed. At 12:45am she knocks on the door again and says, "I couldn't find one." Seriously! No fan. No face cloths. It's 100 degrees in the room. It was excruciatingly uncomfortable. NEVER again. ||||The breakfast is definitely NOT anything to write home about. Some fruit and some yogurt in a bowl with a cup of coffee. Nice, but at a B&B, people are expecting scrambled eggs, bacon, toast, juice, coffee, etc.||||It's really disappointing, because this was our only weekend away planned for the whole year...

A La Gallarie is in a great location on the Niagara Parkway. The grounds are beautifully kept, the pool is lovely and the home is immaculately clean. ||However, have no expectation of privacy as Diane entered our room multiple times during our stay while we were out enjoying the wineries. We were not provided with keys and were unable to lock our door. Frequently we would return and our room door was ajar when we remember closing it completely when we left. ||Do not expect your usual breakfast provided at most B&Bs. It left a lot to be desired. Coffee was not freely available nor were other drinks to accompany the lacklustre breakfast. ||Our room was very warm and it was difficult to sleep. We were not allowed to keep the fan on during the day or keep our curtains open to enjoy the lovely view. Diane would enter our room once we had left and turn off the fan if we had left it on. This was disheartening as we felt like someone was overseeing our actions. The experienced reminded us of being children staying at our grandparents home. ||There are many opportunities for A La Gallarie to improve their service delivery and become an enjoyable and memorable escape from the everyday. An improved breakfast and respect of customer’s boundaries would be a welcomed change to this vacation...

We came expecting bikes as advertised on the ad to find they were no longer offered so had to pay extra to hire from elsewhere and found that other guests mistakenly took our bikes thinking they were offered by the owner so a bit of misrepresentation which caused some awkwardness and was dismissed by Diane by ‘yes I really should update the website”. Our room had the sink and toilet in different rooms which was odd but granted the room we choose as opposed to the room with either only a tub and no shower. The rooms had no fans and very hot. The AC was shut down at night and make sleeping difficult. Diane was very friendly but seems more interested in how our stay intersected with her own plans so we questioned her commitment to the B&B. An example is when we called repeatedly when our bikes were missing we couldn’t leave a msg as her mailbox was full but there was no call back on our multiple missed calls. She was also concerned enough about our arrival time to have called several times when we were en route though it was well within the window we indicated when booking. She ||chastised is for not t responding as she had dinner plans....