Villa d'Este for lunch or drinks?
 

Hello fodorites...thanks to all of the help on this forum my husband and I will be in the lake region for almost two weeks in early September. My parents were fortunate enough to stay at the Villa d'Este many moons ago and although it is way out of our price range we thought it might be nice to go for lunch or for drinks but I don't know if the propery allows non-guests to do that. I have an email out to the hotel but was wondering what anyone might know about that and just how expensive lunch might be. I am hearing it could cost upwards of $300. If it is worth it I might consider it. My father just passed away and as I said, my parents stayed there a very long time ago and so I thought it would be nice to experience it on some level.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

You can eat there as a non-guest, but I'm not sure you will want to pay their prices. See my post of November 8:



http://www.fodors.com/community/euro...-much-else.cfm

Thanks...if I'm reading corrently you opted to not eat there, is that right? I expect it to be pretty pricey so not sure what I'll do. Thank you so much for the heads up though.

I did not eat there. We had planned to have lunch (my parents had also stayed there, long ago, and I had heard about this legendary hotel since I was small) but the prices were really out of line.

I do also remember looking at the dinner menu and thinking that it might be doable with judicious ordering, but I doubt if you would get out of there with wine for much under $300US.
What I mean by this perhaps contradictory statement is that the dinner might present a decent price/value ratio, whereas the lunch with the 28-euro club sandwich clearly was not good value. Check to see if they have any sort of dress code for dinner if you do decide to eat there. Maybe they can send you a menu with prices..

Okay...thank you.