People mention Italy, you think of Roma with it’s beautiful architecture, it’s Roman heritage, the Vatican. You think of Milan, the height of fashion, you think of Ferrari, you think of hills, lakes, the beach. Then you get Latina!
Latina is a city about 75Km south of Roma, on the western side of Italy. The city itself was built in the 1930’s by Mussolini, to give people work, so there is no real heritage there, it is fairly plain, and functional.
The city of Latina really doesn’t get tourists, as most go past it from Roma to Napoli, or the other way round, on the main road!

** Where is it?**

The Rose hotel is situated at the Southern end of the city in Via die Volsini, just off of the Via dei Monti Lepini. It is fairly easy to find, you just follow the inner ring road (it helps if you can drive like a maniac, give no signals, and don’t stop for traffic lights!)

Really if anyone is coming here they will generally have a rental car. I did notice a lot of buses on the main roads, but I’m not too sure where they go to or come from.

The nearest Railway station is in the next town called Latina Scarlo – which is about 10km away, and cost me 12 Euros in a taxi.

** First Impression **

Driving up to the hotel, you approach on a fairly unkempt concrete road, which doesn’t fill you with good feelings! There is a small industrial area to one side of the road, and a sports club/gym on the other. The hotel is a fairly new building. It is situated in a fairly large open area, with plenty of parking. The area outside the hotel is very clean and tidy. It looked to me as if there was still a bit of building going on, as there was a lot of bare concrete, and scaffolding! – I never saw anyone working there, and in my stay didn’t really notice any progress.
The land around the hotel was fenced off and completely overgrown, so it detracted from it a little! That said the land that the hotel stood on, was really well landscaped, with flowerbeds and a large pond (that was empty)

** What does it have? **

This is a basic hotel, it has the ground floor with the reception, bar area, breakfast area and meeting room. There are then three floors of rooms. The hotel has 75 rooms.
The hotel has a conference room, which can seat about 60. There is a bar, and a large open plan seating area (where you have breakfast) The reception and bar are also in this area.

** Check-in **

The first thing you notice is that all the staff speak really good English, which helps, as my Italian is not too good, Ok I can get a hotel room and order food, but anything beyond that things get a bit difficult.

The check-in process is fairly standard, you fill in the details on the form, hand over your passport, get the standard keycard, and away you go.

All the staff I came into contact with were really friendly, and really helpful. It is actually worth staying there just for that.

My room was on the first floor, there is the option of the stairs or the lift. The lift was very clean, and very quick (I had a lot of luggage so didn’t fancy the stairs!) The stairs which I used every other time were covered in marble times, and were immaculate.

I noticed that there were a lot of fire points in each corridor, and the fire exits were really well marked.

** The rooms **

I got in my room, used the keycard to gain access. The keycard is then put into a device on the wall, which then turns on the power to the room. I looked around the room, the first thing I thought was that there was something kind of familiar about it, I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

The room consisted of a nice large double bed, with lights on either side, there was also a switch for turning the lights off in the rest of the room..

There was a TV, displaying a nice welcome message (In English) The TV had multiple channels, including several English channels (BBC World, CNN and so on) as I’ve mentioned on another hotel op, I love watching local TV when I’m overseas, it really makes you appreciate our channels!

The room had quite a large desk area, with power sockets and modem point

There is an open hanging area for clothes, and a couple of open shelves.

There is a kettle in the room, and a supply of coffee and pretty manky tea. If anyone stays here and you like tea, I would recommend taking your own (I did)

The bathroom is really a shower room with a toilet. There were plenty of towels, and shampoo/soap.

There is a direct dial telephone. I only made local calls, as I have an Internet dial up system which allows me to contact local servers anywhere in the world, so my telephone bills were minimal, for 2 weeks, being on the Internet every night cost me about 10 Euros

My room was cleaned very well, and I cannot complain about it, except one day when all my shirts were taken off the hangers and left on the bed – I can only assume the room maid was cleaning the hangers and forgot to put them back!! (I mentioned this to reception; they gave me a couple of free beers from the bar!)

** Breakfast **

One thing about this hotel, is that they do not have a restaurant, yes you can get a good breakfast, but if you want an evening meal, you have to go out. Anyway breakfast was OK, it was a continental breakfast buffet, so you could have cereal, yoghurt, fresh juice, fruit, and the best bread rolls I think I’ve ever had – they were definitely fresh, as I saw the baker delivering them most mornings! There was a coffee machine, dispensing all kinds of coffee (no tea though) You could also get the receptionist to make you an espresso.

One Thursday, I came down to leave for work. Both the foyer and outside was full of armed guards! I thought “hmm an armed escort to work nice!” No! it turned out to be security for a meeting that was being held in the hotel meeting room, discussing ways of dealing with the Mafia!! I must admit I had thoughts of getting back to my room and finding a horses head in my bed! Needless to say nothing happened.

I was staying here for a couple of weeks, and I found that the hotel policy was that you had to check out after the first week, and then check in again! It was bizarre that they asked me if I wanted a smoking room, and all the general check-in questions again, when I was going to be staying in the same room – Oh well, when in Rome and all that!

The other thing I didn’t like was the fact that if you wanted to eat something, you had to go out, there were a few pizzerias within walking distance of this hotel. Also about 300 metres away is a large supermarket, so you could always get things to keep in the room. I generally drove into the centre of town (about 2km) and found places to eat.

** The Bar **

As I mentioned there is a bar area, they seemed to sell

quite a large range of drinks. I only drank beer, so a large beer was 3.5 Euros, and a bottle of Italian beer 2.5 Euros.

** Check out **

This went really smoothly, I went down, asked for my bill, I checked it and found no mistakes!! Bearing in mind that I had already paid for half of my stay.
I needed a taxi to get me to the railway station, so the receptionist ordered me one, said it would be 10 minutes – and it was. (It must have been the only careful Italian driver in Italy!)

** Other things in the area **

About 3-4km away is Latina Lido, which is basically the beach. It’s not a bad beach, and you can swim in the med (not that I got anytime with work) – I can recommend the Ice Cream parlour though! You can also drive down the coast road to Naturrno and Anzio
There are some lovely little villages slightly further inland, such as Semoneta, which has a really nice castle and a market. Nearby is a village called Nifa, which apparently has really nice gardens, and was a favourite retreat of the Princess of Wales!

In Latina itself there are a couple of shopping malls, I went to one, and it was very good, a great range of shops. In the town I did find a main shopping area, which again seemed to cater for everybody. There are also a large number of places to eat and drink.

They also have a really large Sunday Market, which sell the general tat that you get at Sunday Markets.

** Cost **

I booked 3 weeks in advance, so got a rate of 62 Euros a night, which included breakfast. I thought this was quite a good deal. I saw a sign saying the room rate was 80 Euros, children under 12 are allowed to stay free if they stay in their parents room.

Hotel Rose Latina
Via dei Volsini, 28
04100 Latina
Italia

Tel 0039 0773 268744
Email info@rose-latina.it

** Disabled **

Access to the hotel is on the level, so there are no real problems, I cannot say if there were specially designated “disabled” rooms, but with the exception of the step into the shower my room was very accessable.
http://www.rose-latina.it

Why did it seem familiar? Well it turns out the hotel used to be a Holiday Inn Express, it is laid out more or less the same as all the other ones I’ve stayed in round the World.

Thanks for reading this, and if you do end up in Latina, this is a reasonable priced hotel that might be worth considering.

Just for the record I have to go out there again for 3 months, so I’ll probably try some of the other hotels!

Larry