Collegio di Maria | Convento Cefalù B&B is a hipster hotel in Old Town in Cefalù. This place has 69 reviews and an average rating of 4.2 of 5. This is a good rating.
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Reviews from visitors:
The convent here at Cefalu was wonderful. It's very simple, but very clean with excellent views of the ocean. The nuns and staff are friendly and helpful and makes exploring the fantastic Cefalu so easy and accessible.
I do not think you could ever find any location as beautiful as this in Sicily. The place is simple but very clean . The staff is gentle and efficient and the nuns are amazing!
I liked the location so much! It must be the best you can get in Cefalu. Also the staff was friendly and smiling and the nuns around were so cute! My room was basic but very clean and tidy. At night, I slept with my window open so that I could listen to the waves of the ocean. I miss this place already and I hope I can be back one day.
This was my third time in the bed and breakfast of the convent of Cefalu. This is for me a very special place to where I will be back again.
Firstly - let’s start with the obvious. This is prime real estate owned by the church and still has sisters living here who do good in their community. It’s literally on the beach and if you are so inclined you could fall asleep listening to the waves crash against the rocks.
There are a number of balconies and people who stay in such lodgings tend to be respectful and I’ve never once feared my stuff would get stolen.
However..... the sisters are getting on and cannot do the keep up on a hotel themselves so they must employ people right?
And that’s when it gets harder to recommend this. You probably found this through monestarystays website (who charge about 75 euro booking fee for three nights stay). You don’t expect much. You know the rooms will be extremely basic but clean , right?
So the second you note that something needs repair and ask if it can be done , a sister will call the male housekeeping.... who will then lie, avoid, delay, berate and argue with you (and the sister) to get out of doing any work for (a woman) and cannot be trusted to give an honest or direct response. Long story short it took an elderly sister to focus on resolving a problem to do what the housekeeping people are meant to do. I was not at all surprised by the bs shown to me but I was shocked to see how this kid got away with it to the sister. So I started to suspect that these people can’t be fired for some reason...
The floors were still covered in the previous occupants hair, basic maintenance was not done, the beds are very lumpy and hard and the a/c let out a puff of warm air on 18 degrees. Towels are scratchy. No breakfast. Etc.
So although the views are nice and the nuns do good this was by way the worst stay I’ve had in all my stays across many different types of accommodation across Italy including other convents . Mostly because the housekeeping people have a job when it’s clear they don’t deserve one - in a place so poor old men pick through garbage to survive ( even though you’ll see the cart moving around throughout the day )....
If they changed the staff and focused on getting people who have positive energy and work integrity then this could be a place that surpasses the fanciest hotel on the beach.
If you can sleep standing up and nothing at all bothers you and wouldn’t complain no matter what then you may well enjoy this.
2 Taliammari
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3 Casa Barone Agnello
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