Valle di Mare Country Resort

My husband and I celebrated our wedding with friends at Valle di Mare this Spring. I booked almost all the rooms for the weekend and organized a small ceremony and the reception at the resort. The place was just perfect. Staff: The owners Anna, Alessandro, Lara and Alessia are just amazing people that helped all the way accommodating every request with kindness and grace. Their team helping out at the resort (bar, restaurant, rooms) is outstanding and a special thanks go to Noemi, who was extraordinary in helping us out during the whole weekend. If you want to organize a classy wedding or any other kind of party tailored to your need Anna is the perfect person to contact. She has great organizational and emotional intelligence and has been my understanding my needs and anticipating my requests better than any wedding planner could ever do. Location: 10/10 the garden is stunning, the resort has 27/28 rooms which are connected to the poll/restaurant area and reception. The beach is 10 minutes away and reachable through a very beautiful walk in the Sicilian vegetation (lemon trees, figs and olive trees). The resort is a bit outside but walking distance from Fontane Bianche, so only 15 minutes by car away from both Siracusa, Avola and Noto. Marzamemi and Ragusa are also easily reachable and the place is easily reachable from CTA and Comiso airports. The resort has plenty of parking space. So all my friends were in the same place at different times of day and not just for the actual ceremony, at the same time they were able to easily tour nearby beautiful locations! Food: 10/10; Breakfast Sicilian style was very good. The restaurant and bar service was spotless. The catering at the reception exactly as I requested - the wine was very high quality and the oysters huge!! Overall very fairly priced. Accommodations: the rooms are very very clean and pretty. There is no wifi in the rooms but you are not gonna spend much time there as the nature around is so gorgeous and there is a lot to do, Internet can be easily accessed around the reception area and reception is good with data.

This is definitely not a 4 star resort, 3 star at best. The positives are very nice surrounding gardens, very good pool, very good breakfast (with fresh eggs), staff friendly and attentive, trying their best for the customers, ample secure parking, very close to the beach (with public beach areas which are free) where it is safe to swim. There is WiFi but only in the reception/breakfast area. You will definitely need a car and drive to Syracuse for restaurants, bars, shops and wonderfully picturesque old town (the best in Sicily). The downsides are the rooms are dark and gloomy (though the bathrooms are good size and brighter) and beds and pillows are hard and rather worn. No soap. You must keep all doors and windows shut at all times otherwise you'll be massacred by mosquitoes. It's a long walk to find any bars or restaurants (extremely limited choice in Fontana Bianci). The beach is small and dirty. Unfortunately during our stay there were heavy thunderstorms resulting in some flooding and the water poured into the room through light fittings and air conditioning unit. So the chalets desperately need maintenance and updating.

We were originally staying in Hotel Bella Regis but we're offered this instead by Said hotel because of a technical problem. We were told it was a four star and normally more expensive but that we could have it at the price of our booking at Bella Regia and this part of the offer was fulfilled. It wasn't ideal because we wanted to be within walking distance of other restaurants but as Fontane Bianche was quieter than we expected and as the pool at Valle Di Mare is very good we decided to give it a go. The whole place has a grand entrance to the main driveway and secure parking which is fine. The reception doors need updating and the whole place feels as if it needs an update to deserve a four star rating. The chalet style accommodation is disappointing. You expect a window at least but the only external light is through louvered slats in the front door (which is not very secure). There is a window in the bathroom but obviously you don't want the bathroom door open all the time. The bedroom is a small double and adequately equipped as described on the website but again needs updating and feels gloomy. End of season there is the risk of rain for a day at least so spending some time watching TV in the chalet is unavoidable. We were lucky with the weather until the last night when there was very heavy rain. I woke up at 6am and found a leak in the bathroom, investigating further I found it was dripping down the main light fitting, the air-conditioning unit and down the wall over the fusebox. I was concerned about losing power completely and we parked up our belongings to get these in the car before anything got wet. Here there is another problem, reception is not open overnight, only from about 7am to 9pm, so we waited until breakfast and during a break in the rain. Reception were helpful and offered to find us another chalet but this would take at least two or three hours. We decided to cut our losses in the end and get a hotel near the airport for our last night in case there were more problems caused by the rain. This was heavy rain even for this time of year and there was some flooding on the roads. However we felt that even given that it was the end of season the place was poorly maintained. Except for the pool which was great.