The Relais & Chateaux cachet offered some comfort when we reserved but past experience has yielded patchy results with the brand, so it was no guarantee and the outcome here was not up to expectations. Generally, the Hotel Bastion which does, as the name suggests, straddle the vestiges of a medieval bastion on the Venetian city wall was a comfortable and convenient place to stay. However, it fell short of excellent or even very good by having too many flaws.
The good: reception was welcoming, capable and forthcoming. Our Deluxe King room #302 was modern, clean, quiet (save for the AC – see below), bright, roomy, comfortable and tastefully decorated. Everything expected was there and it mostly worked as expected. The king bed was comfortable, the linens crisp and clean and we were each able to find a favourite pillow. The bathroom is spacious, modern, well-appointed and the bath linens were plush and plentiful. The included Wifi worked well on all our devices. The included breakfast was a small but fair quality buffet with hot selections to order. Parking is on the street in locations immediately adjoining and dedicated to the hotel.
The not so good: despite there being plenty of room, there’s very little horizontal space in the bathroom for toiletries etc. The function of the bathroom exhaust fan bore no relationship to the power switch setting – mostly it just did its own thing regardless of our needs. One of the bedside reading lamps had a broken switch so would not work.
The bad: we did not use the air-conditioning for most of our mild Autumn stay but when we did it was very noisy and would be a considerable irritation if needed. The washbasin tap was dyslexic in that the cold setting produced hot water and vice versa. Don’t worry, it’s a mistake you only make once. The breakfast service was erratic depending upon the staff on duty; our first day was fine but the next is was abysmal. The staff were pleasant enough, but mostly invisible and then inept when we did flush them out.
Need to know: entering either the hotel name or address in Google Maps led us astray from which it required some diligent dead-reckoning to find the place. Once you get nearby, there are some signs indicating the way, but you need to be very observant to find them.
