Masseria Panareo

The place is beautiful and it has a pool, although right now being off-season the pool was empty. The inside is very new and spacious and the rooms are nice with comfortable beds and a little private patio on back. If you are a family or a bunch of friends that just want to party and sit around, this is the place with views of the sea and farms and greenery. We wanted to use this place as a central point and travel from that point, but it was difficult, even though it is only about 20 minutes from Otranto (the city closest to it and worth seeing). We got lost into a long loop going there the frist time from Lecche, and then again returning from Otranto and spent at least 1 hr finding the place. If you decide to stay here, make sure you get very clear directions because there are a lot of places where you can deviate and end in the long loop. The country road in front of the hotel is nice for jogging and if you go to the right there is a resort little town by the sea a bit west of the hotel. You can go cross country for a little bit on foot and reach the sea. the road is a ways to the left of the hotel. We only ate one meal and we found it lacking. They have some nice places outside to seat and drink your own wine (or order at their bar) if you decide to do that, and also inside there is a fireplace and you can seat and order or bring your own.

Room and view were fine. Hotel is let down by the restaurant - on one night delays over over 1 hr between courses (only 4 in dining room but service geared only to a children's birthday party going on outside) and poor food on that night. Consistently the worst bread I've eaten in Italy served at all meals - stale sliced and apparently from a packet, while there are are local bread shops providing excellent bread Basically it could be great based on location but needs to pull its finger out on the manangement side. Checkout took 45 mins with multiple errors on bill

What we liked the most is the property, the building is beautiful with a nice swimming pool. What we didn't liked was we felt that we being watched by the owner all the time. In the swimming pool, the lobby, bar etc. he always would show up. Also the first night we were there for dinner he and his family sat in the middle of the dinning room and had a much different and better meal than anybody, we felt that was not appropriate at all.