Madame Mere — Hotel in Calvi

Dear me, what a miserable lot they are here, especially the lady in the breakfast room. The breakfast is as poor as I have ever paid for - a croissant, stale rolls, powdered orange juice and sachets of cheap jam - and they played a techno station loudly over the speakers (any need for that at 8.00am?). I asked for a fruit yoghurt as others had clearly been eating and was told firmly there were none left, only natural ones, ok I suppose though she never went to check; there was one choice cereal, but no bowls...and no milk... so when I asked for these she huffed and puffed, went to find them from the kitchen then watched over as I poured both as though I was going to take too much - incredible. The final straw, almost humourously, was the coffee machine suddenely no longer dispensed coffee (just hot water). Well she was banging the machine with her fist and swearing. The couple who had since come in were trying not to laugh, but truly this is a shambolic place.The saving grace that gives it 2/5 was efficient aircon in the room, free parking in the middle of St Florent and a nice pool on a hot day. I was there on business so could afford to be slightly less concerned, but the tourists should rightly feel...

If you’ve ever wondered what the primordial soup from which the first life on Earth crawled billions of years ago then look no further than the pool at the Madame Mere Hotel, St Florent. This pool is not only a health hazard for the town of St Florent but probably the whole of Corsica as well. But seriously though folks, there is no excuse for a pool so thick with green algae that you can’t see the bottom, no excuse also for broken and missing tiles around the edge of the pool.||Inside too, things are not much better, my room smelt damp and musty and bathroom wasn’t particularly clean – I don’t mind older hotels being a bit tired and frayed at the edges but there is no excuse for any hotel not being properly aired and cleaned.||The food for my evening meal in the restaurant was edible but I suspect had made its way to the table via the freezer and the microwave. The rude and unhelpful staff wouldn’t sell me a glass of red wine; it was a choice of buy a bottle from them or do without. At breakfast there was milk but no cereal and the croissants were probably overcooked bakery rejects that had been fresh sometime...

We stayed here for two nights in July 2015 and payed 45€ per night as an average.||||The hotel has a large parking area which was good for us since we had just arrived by the ferry to Bastia. Staff was friendly upon arrival and we were given a double room facing the mountains.||||Room was an average double room in terms of size and the air conditioning was working well. The wi-fi, on the other hand, was not. We did not get a signal in our room.||||Beds, bathroom and the rest of the room was like the average hotel room. Nothing fancy, nothing broken. It is not a trendy hotel, its a bit worn out, but everything is clean and fresh.||||The hotel has a pool but we never used it because it was right outside of the hotel where a lot of people were passing and sitting down for a drink or food (both during the day and the evening).||||We used this hotel as a starting point for driving around Cap Corse, and it suited us well. I would recommend it to anyone looking for a cheap stay in...