Villa Claudia

I stayed with my parents in this B&B for 3 nights. It's owned by an Italian couple and the B&B is about 10 minutes walk from the city centre.

PROS: Very very comfortable. The room with 3 beds, the beds themselves, the bathroom, the towels and beds made everyday, proper homely feeling. And of course, tailor made breakfast. As this was the top floor (aka, attic), the bathroom had a window on the ceiling as well. It felt like camping when I got up at night to go to the toilet - the stars in the sky and all.

CONS: Very sloppy account management. When we arrived on Wed night with a reservation for 3 nights, the lady was surprised. I showed her the visitbath.co.uk reservation, she claims she never got it. Her computer was sloppy too - infected by a virus! I offered to help her fix it, and even told her what to do but she just kept deferring the subject and by the 4th day, she had done nothing. The owners were very friendly, but also tried to get some extra money out of me. Apparently if you book directly through their website, they get all the money (110 GBP per night) but if you book through Bath's official website, the official Tourism centre keeps about 10% of the profit and they get paid the remaining. So the lady tried to get the remaining money out of me by telling me half a dozen times - "oh don't worry, I won't charge you for the extra 10%". Damn right you won't!

I overall thought that B&Bs are very very expensive. And when I said earlier about a homely feeling, it does come at a price. When you stay in a hotel, you can walk down early morning and b'fast is served from 630am. In this B&B, the couple would wake up later than us and lazily saunter in 845am and serve us breakfast at 9am. And the usual annoyances such as small talk about her daugther's wedding when all we wanted was eggs and bread so that we could get going with the day!

OVERALL RATING: I think you need to be really old and really rich to stay in a B&B, much less one in a competitive spot such as Bath where the prices of all B&Bs are high. With the exchange rate being as high as it is, whilst the service was excellent, I still think 220$ a day is rather pricey!