This hotel was a great find. It's at the slightly quieter end of Giardini Naxos (the other end looked a bit tacky). We had a front room with balcony (with a bit of a sea view) and didn't find it noisy at all, though we used the quiet air conditioner. Breakfast was lovely with good coffee! The beach straight across the road was perfect. There are lots of local restaurants and the bus stop to Taormina was close by. Anne was really helpful. We would have liked to stay longer! Jill and David Parry, Barnet UK

The Hotel Villa Mora is located about as plumb central in Giardini Naxos as it is possible to get. This makes getting anywhere barely more than a short walk, and getting to the beach a scarcely arduous two minute stroll. It's a reasonably priced 2/3 star hotel with 17 rooms. It is owned by a German/Italian couple and is attentively staffed by themselves and other locals. It's tastefully decorated with Sicilian artefacts (which some have incredibly mistaken as tat, but these are people who probably think the pyramids could use a bit of plaster work...). The staff are attentive and helpful without being invasive - they are at the distance you want them to be. The guy who does the late shift on the reception (Carmello?) was a gem and helped us with excursion bookings, recommended restaurants that turned out to be amongst the best, and he made sure I didn't run out of beers in the evening ;-). The hotel is almost spotlessly clean, and as long as you remember to leave your key at reception, during the day (which we didn't always do...) your room will be serviced. These hotels typically show signs of, ...erm, idiosyncratic plumbing and creative electrical work, and the Villa Mora is not an exception, but everything worked, in our room at least, and whilst you'd get something more efficiently homogenised from a Ramada or a Hyatt, if you're in the Villa Mora then that's not what you're here for (or you're not wanting to have to afford that). The breakfasts are a small cut above the rather minimalist fayre that some alberghi offer. The Italians are not great breakfasters, but the Villa Mora churns out a reasonable spread of ham, cheese, salami, rolls, bread, cake, tea, coffee and fruit which is perfectly adequate for a good start to the day. We were in the hotel the week after "Califbob" was there, and our experience couldn't have been more different (although it's true that we were a family and he/she was on his/her own). I'm surprised Califbob wasn't familiar with the looooong established tradition of late July/early August as *the* holiday season for the Italians (not just in Sicily) even though he/she is "quite culturally attuned" to the area....

I found this hotel via 2 of the more popular travel books for the Sicily region. I wound up writing to both of these travel books immediately upon returning to the states. I am an architect in the States and moreover, my parents immigrated from about 50 miles south of the hotel, so I speak both Italian and the Sicilian dialect and am quite culturally attuned to the area. I called and spoke with Anna, the German owner, who is married to Nando, apparently a Sicilian. She was very nice and answered my concerns about parking, travel to the hotel and instructed me how to make the reservation via FAX. I called back within a day to see if she received it at which point, she became quite nasty, telling me she was tied up with a guest. I should have cancelled but did not know at the time that Sicily has a very defined tourist season and that you can just about pick your rooms in mid May. Once I got there, the room was miniscule. I stayed in it one night and then told them that "my college days were way behind me" and I needed to change to something nicer or I would need to leave. Nando told me I would go into another room, with a view. At the last minute, I got the "bait and switch" because he had erred, but I still got a larger room with no view whatsoever, though I did have to pay a little more than the miniscule room I left behind. I should have left the hotel. Lastly, I was in my room at about 4 or 5 pm taking a light nap. The door was locked as I had checked. Suddenly, the door opened. I got up right away to see who had opened it and saw no one there. The pluses are that it is right by the sea, but then so are all the others, there is a decent breakfast and it is affordable, but then so are all the others in the Spring season. I was speaking with another traveler, also traveling solo, who was a doctor in his 30s from California. He, too, was quite unhappy with management's tapproach. (While reading some of the information in other posts, it could very well be that they are more hospitable to couples or families than they are to solo travelers, despite obvious professional status). Make your own judgment. I personally found Anna and Nando to be brusque and underhanded, respectively, and was so angered by 4 days of a hellish stay that I wrote back to the tour books. Incidentally, I was in Sicily last month where I stayed at two other hotels (3 days apiece) where the comfort and the service were excellent and in the 60 E to 70 E range. I will review those shortly and separately.

We booked this through Booking.com. I highly recommend this site because they give you up close maps as to where it is. This in general is most helpful if you are driving here. The hotel staff was very nice. We had the room on the top floor so we could see the beach from there. Disadvantage of that is walking up four flights. The manager at the desk gave us a tip for a restaurant that was one of the best meals of my life. It was about a 15 minute ride towards Francovilla. It is actually in Graniti. I think it was called A' Cassita. Right after you cross the bridge and you have to go either left to Francovilla or right to Graniti. It is about 20 meters on the left on the road to Graniti. The owner comes out and asks if there is anything you don't like...say no. Then he just keeps bring small portions of anitipasta. Then a primi patti. At the end I would say no to the meat portion. It is kind of anticlimatic. We paid about 50 Euro each but it was a memory that will last a lifetime. We ate outside on the veranda. Go on a weekday. Not as crowded. There were people there from all over the world, Germans, Brits, Swedes, Italians, and Americans.

This hotel was a great find. It's at the slightly quieter end of Giardini Naxos (the other end looked a bit tacky). We had a front room with balcony (with a bit of a sea view) and didn't find it noisy at all, though we used the quiet air conditioner. Breakfast was lovely with good coffee! The beach straight across the road was perfect. There are lots of local restaurants and the bus stop to Taormina was close by. Anne was really helpful. We would have liked to stay longer! Jill and David Parry, Barnet UK