So here we are in a family hotel in Italy on holiday, near Lake Garda. We are supposed to be here for two weeks and it's costing 5800 euros full board for four of us including DS2 (16) and DS3 (8). We have had a terrible year and this was supposed to be a special holiday to recover.
We all hate it. I hate it so much I could cry.
The hotel itself is really small and the things we thought we would use - spa and so on - are only open 4-7.30 daily (it said nothing about this on the website). We've just had a meal and it's reminiscent of school dinners - I could have cooked it better myself. You can only have dinner from 7-8pm. Nothing like the lovingly garnished offerings on the website, basically stodge. Even the teenager gave up ploughing through it. Our wine eventually came after we had fiinished the meal. There are no soft drinks for kids apart from Fanta, Sprite or Coke. The kids bedroom smells of smoke (as does ours) and has restricted ceiling height so DS2 is going to be banging his head the whole time. The decor reminds me of my grandmother's house about 30 years ago. There is nowhere to get away from the din because it's so small and i currently have a kids' disco under my window (it's 930 pm here) and DS3 is tired from travelling all day but it's too noisy to go to sleep.
I have been down the the manager to explain the problems but he just shrugged and said 'other people like it'. He said we have to stay at least a week otherwise they will have an empty room.
So we are trapped in this glorified youth hostel listening to a kids disco booming away under the window eating stodge and will have to spend 2900 euros for the privilege. And there may be nowhere else to go,
Help, what do I do?