Spagna, Parlamento House: Roma Appartamento #527b
We arrived in Rome on a Friday at 1900,
We were greeted by a very nice man from the booking office which gave us the key and showed us the place. Being tired from the drive and having no alternative on a Friday night, we accepted the place. Reality came later – although the space is fully renovated, it turned out to be purely a long, non-ventilated corridor leading to a small semi-separated space through a maze, the entire "Apartment" has no natural light at all, actually – it has no usable windows at all (there are 3 windows in the entire place - one at one end, through which the AC duct passes - so it cannot be opened, and 2 at the other end of the corridor, which hardly open to an inner ventilation shaft (no outside access or view at all).
Besides the fact that there is no natural light (literally – i.e. in case of power out – you are in pitch dark even at mid-day, and you have to walk the maze totally blind), there is no ventilation at all and no space for six, the so called "bedroom" which is at the end of the corridor and maze has only partial separation (the separation wall is only partial in height – leaving the top third open, so no privacy at all).
Being Friday night, the booking office was already closed for the weekend, so we were stuck till Monday.
Bottom line – our Rome holiday started 3 days late, and only after we moved to another location, which we located independently.
Few comments regarding the booking service office("citiesreference"); [1] although they do not work on weekend, they did reply to my mails and showed great willingness to assist, but only on Monday, [2] understanding the gravity of the misleading facts on the site, they immediately agreed to refund my money, [3] due to my complaint, they personally visited the place, following which, they changed the description on their site, so as not to mislead others – I thank them for all their efforts.
