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RCI 2079 Pianeta Maratea (Italy)

myhottoddy

TUG Member
Joined
Jun 6, 2005
Messages
105
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Location
Los Alamos, NM
Planning a trip to Italy Sept 2010, Has anyone been to Maratea recently that can provide info on the area, Unit 5100 Upper or lower apartment, driving distance fro Naples Airport, etc. Worth a visit or waste of time. Should we fly to Rome and tent a car or take the train to Maratea and try to rent a car locally?

Thanks,
 
I don't know your entire itinerary, but we did an exchange into this resort back in 2000. We flew into Rome where we picked up a pre-booked rental car. The autostrada drive south was easy - getting up the mountain to the resort took awhile. We didn't make it to Pianeta Maratea til after dark, and it wasn't so easy to find, but I would pre-book a rental car in any case - and major airports will give you better pricing.

Although Italy is about my favorite country and we've traveled there 4 times now and can't seem to get enough :) - we didn't especially care for the location of this resort (nor our accommodations themselves) to warrant a whole week, and checked out early, to head for the "greener pastures" of Sorrento and the Amalfi coast for more days than we'd originally planned. If you haven't already, you can read my review here on TUG, it's the negative one - but it's dated, things may have improved over the past 9 years.

That said, Maratea is a very pretty medieval town, there are some other hill towns not too far away, and there's one excursion we didn't take from there that in retrospect, I wish we had - the ruins at Paestum.

Beyond that: Pompeii, Herculaneum, Sorrento and the Amalfi coast are absolutely worth your time - a bit farther from Maratea and IMO you'd want to at least overnight.

I also wish I'd been more persistent in getting our unit switched - ours wasn't satisfactory in many ways, and the resort seemed half-empty. Our last evening at dinner, we spoke to some other guests who did get a different unit on request. You may get one you're happy with right off the bat, but if you don't, request a switch - and if they're not responsive, keep asking until you find a staff person who will help you. The upper apartments should have better views (the best feature of this resort), and if they're still having "animation" aka loud entertainment, the farther away from that, the better IMO.

Hope that helps - enjoy your trip!
 
Good sign - I read thru the tripadvisor reviews linked by alwysonvac above, and the bad ones were the earlier ones, the better ones the more recent - so it *does* sound like things at the resort have improved since our visit. Hope you'll report back to TUG on your return!
 
Read the Reviews

Laurie, Thanks for the tip on Trip Advisor, I have decided to wait until airline fairs are available for the travel dates (330 days out) to confirm areservation. $1,300 to $1,500 airfares from ABQ to FCO or higher to Naples do little to intice me. We have a trip reserved to Playa Gramde in Cabo starting Dec 27, 2009 that will most likely be canceled due to air fare.

Tom
 
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