Hotel Commercio & Pellegrino, Calle delle Rasse 4551, Castello, 30122 Venice, Italy
The hotel is an absolutely fantastic location. It's about a minute's walk from the San Marco ferry stop, and just a few minutes walk to Piazza San Marco. It's close enough to everything that you can pop back in there to go to the toilet (which is a huge bonus with the scarcity and cost of public toilets in Europe). The gentleman on reception when we checked in was very nice and helpful. Breakfast wasn't super fancy but was nice enough.
But that's about all the good things I can say about this hotel.
Our first problem was that booking.com never passed through the request for two single beds (which is what I'd chosen during the booking process). The hotel was fully booked so we had no option to change, so we had to sleep in the same bed which was somewhat uncomfortable for us. I should be clear - this is not this hotel's fault, this is booking.com's fault, and it was the second time this happened to us on our trip.
In the room (which was clean, but quite small, but that's expected for Venice so I'm not complaining about that), housekeeping had somehow dislodged the shower screen door, so you couldn't open or close it. We needed help to get that fixed. We couldn't manage to close the bathroom window either, but that wasn't really a problem anyway.
The real problem with this hotel was the air conditioning, or rather the lack thereof. We found it uncomfortably warm in the room. The air conditioner didn't work at all to begin with, so we had to ask about it, and it turns out they turn it off centrally at the end of summer. So they enabled it for us. But it didn't actually work - it made a lot of noise but no cold air came out. So we turned it off. A short time later it turned itself back on. It did this twice! So the first night I actually turned it to heating mode so the thermostat would at least shut it off. We opened the window that night but every little sound from the alley reverberated around and it was really quite noisy and we couldn't sleep. And the bell tower (which is line of sight outside the window) went off at midnight for nearly a hundred rings. And of course then the mosquitoes came in. It was a thoroughly miserable night. We asked management about it, but they said there's laws in Venice about not being able to run the airconditioning if the outside air is below a certain temperature, so it automatically will not work if it's too cool outside. The second night we closed the window to keep the noise and mosquitoes out, which did work, but then the room got uncomfortably hot again. Even Mum who hates the cold found it too hot for her. Another miserable night. The third night we relented and opened the window after the midnight bells so at least it was cooler, even with the mosquitoes.
Oh and also there's trip hazards everywhere. Two steps to get into the lobby, a step from the lift up to the doors of the room, a step up into the bathroom, and even a raised step out of the bathroom back into the room. We tripped on three out of these at various points. All in all it was a pretty miserable stay for us, and I would NOT stay here again.
Building from the alley (our room on left above middle light)
Room 206
Main room. Booking.com didn't pass on the rest for two beds so we got stuck with a double
Luggage area and chair
Desk and TV
Tripping hazard - large step into the bathroom (and there's a smaller trip hazard on the way out of the bathroom)
Bathroom
The shower door was off its runners. And the bathroom window wouldn't close.
View from the window. Yes that's St Mark's Campanile. Yes it rings nearly a hundred times at midnight. Yes it's very loud if you have the windows open. Which you need to do if you want any sort of cooling.
View from the window
View to Doge's Palace and St Mark's Campanile from the window
View into the alley
Breakfast room
Breakfast buffet
Breakfast buffet
Breakfast buffet
Breakfast buffet
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