Villa Fernanda Hotel

My wife and I were the last guests standing at the Villa Fernanda before the hotel closed for the season at the end of October. The weather was sunny and a good 10 degrees or more up on the UK. It's a small, family run hotel, with a lovely pool and garden, where you can enjoy a delightful, home-cooked dinner delivered to your table, instead of bumping into dozens of other guests in the usual buffet free-for-all at bigger hotels. You will need to make a dinner choice at breakfast. The hotel's location is a 25-minute bus ride from Sorrento. It's a downhill, winding journey all the way and the ride offers fantastic views of the bay. You can walk it in an hour or so if you don't mind a lot of steps ... but don't walk back up ! Buses from Sant Agata are frequent and will also take you to Positano and Amalfi in the other direction. Trains from Sorrento will take you to Pompeii or Herculaneum quite cheaply, certainly when compared to the trips on offer from certain tour operators. It depends whether you're keen to have a door-to-door tour bus service (and possibly a guide). Be warned that hotel rooms can be quite small (ours was) and also the shower cubicle. However, don't let that put you off an enjoyable holiday.

I stayed here for a week with my niece and we really loved it, we arrived late in the evening to a warm welcome and, some plates of food in our room, which was so thoughtful. We ate most of our meals in the hotel, they brought a menu around during breakfast with a few choices for the evening meal, it was always very nicely cooked and very welcome after a day exploring! There is a tobacconist shop, less than 10 minutes away where you can buy bus tickets into Sorrento. The bus into Sorrento always seemed to be on time but, coming back in the late evening was a bit different, they always seemed to be later than then schedule showed but, once you know that, you can work around it. At the hotel, our room was fairly basic but, perfect for our needs, the room was cleaned every day and we were very comfy there. The pool area was always kept very clean and some mornings we took our coffee outside to the little patio area, which was lovely. We didn’t have a problem finding a sun bed, it was nice that nobody seemed to put their towels down to save them, we certainly didn’t have a problem finding two together. We spent a very relaxing afternoon at the pool on our last day, the pool bar menu was also very good. We both agreed that it was a great holiday, in a great hotel, where they looked after us so well, can't thank them enough, the Aperol spritz were really good and we hope to visit again soon.