Hotel Romantik di Aix-en-Provence

This was our second stay at Villa Saint Ange, and I'm disappointed to say it will definitely be our last. We stayed here a couple years ago on our honeymoon, and while we had a few small issues with the service, the gorgeous grounds, immaculate room, and great location merited a return stay. Unfortunately, our return trip was much worse than the first. First, the good: the hotel is still gorgeous, and the pool is still lovely. The location is great - a short walk will bring you right to Cours Mirabeau. The restaurant is newly overseen by Pierre Gagnaire, and is still nice (though honestly no better than under the previous chef). We had two main issues this trip: our room, and the lack of service recovery when we had an issue with it. Our room was located at the front of the hotel overlooking the street. It was very nicely appointed, but as we learned at about 5-6am every single morning, it has a glaring issue: noise. Each morning, a symphony of garbage trucks, delivery vehicles, and other service vehicles absolutely bombarded our room with noise. While any room facing the street is likely a bit noisy, our room in particular was RIGHT above the hotel's loading bay, meaning 5am deliveries to the restaurant were unacceptably loud. The many antique floor-to-ceiling windows in the room were beautiful, but absolutely worthless noise insulators. We mentioned this issue to the staff, who seemed unsurprised by the complaint, and also offered nothing more than a fairly insincere apology. That said, it's not the responsibility of a hotel's receptionist to resolve hotel layout problems - it's the responsibility of management/ownership. This is not the only review to mention this issue, which means management/ownership knows this is a problem and simply does not care. This is also not an inexpensive room - it's actually a Superior category room, and thus commands a price of nearly $1,000/night. My advice to the owner of this hotel: this room cannot be a guest room. The location is not acceptable for a bedroom, and charging this much money for such a substandard room is a bad look. Convert the room to a library, parlor, utility closet - anything but a bedroom. Other consistent, easily-remedied feedback in guest reviews (most notably, lack of coffee maker in the rooms) has been ignored by management, so this likely will be as well.