A Few Hotel Reviews

Last time I came to Europe, I did little reviews of all of the hotels in which I stayed. I noticed that it kind of cluttered up the blog so, to the extent that I did it again on this European trip, I thought I’d do them in little blocs. This is the first of those blocs for this trip – Paris, Marseille and Milan. (Update: As a bonus, I’ve added Pisa.)

In Paris, I stayed at the Hotel Des Nations Saint Germain. It is located in the Latin Quarter, almost literally a stone-throw’s away from the Pantheon and very close to Notre Dame. It was in a very good location, though I’m convinced that there is not a bad location to be found in Paris. The closest familiar chain that I saw was a Starbucks that was located about a kilometer away. There also was a Carrefour grocery very close, which is a grocery chain that I fell in love with in Buenos Aires. The room was about average size for a European budget hotel room. Just a little bit larger than the full-size bed in the room, but large enough. There was a small television with CNN International and BBC and the bathroom was roomy enough. Nothing spectacular, but it was under $100/night, so I will take it. Oh, and internet. It was available, but you had to pay for it. Not too pricey, though, as I spent about $5/day.

In Marseille, I stayed in the New Hotel Select. It is located about four blocks south of the main train station. As I’ve written about before, the neighborhood is a little sketchy between the train station and the hotel, but wonderful in the other direction. When I arrived, I was given a rather large room with a huge bathroom. I was ecstatic for the price – around $80/night. On the second of three nights, though, the toilet stopped working. I was a little less ecstatic. I was moved to the room next door, which was much smaller than my previous room. My ecstasy had pretty much ended by this point. The hotel had free wifi, but only in the lobby, which sent me down to the lobby on a few occasions to play with the beautiful internet. The staff was friendly, but one thing that was really curious was that when I checked out, at 5:00 in the morning, I had to wake the night person up as he was sleeping on the floor behind the desk. I still got out on time, though, so whatever.

In Milan, I stayed at the Hotel Aladin. I’m not sure what to say about this place. It was cheap. So it’s got that going for it. Location-wise, it wasn’t ideal. It was a 25-minute walk to the nearest metro stop, so that was a pain. It was clean enough, I guess. The proprietors were an Asian couple that spoke a little English and were very friendly. That’s about where the good things ended, though. The shower stall was entirely too small for me, and I’m not a huge guy. Somehow, Expedia believes that the fact that there is a computer downstairs for public use during the five minutes a day the owner or his family wasn’t using it constitutes “high-speed internet service.” It didn’t help me none. The television had only local stations, nothing in any language other than Italian. The walls were thin, the room occasionally loud, and there was no breakfast. And when I say it was cheap, I mean only in terms of Milan. Thus far, it’s still the most expensive hotel I’ve stayed in on this leg of the road trip. Had I known, I probably would’ve stayed somewhere else, but I just wanted some place cheap that would allow me to see a match at the San Siro, so I guess the place wasn’t bad enough to ruin my trip, but I don’t think I could recommend it.

As a bonus for you, my special friend, here’s a fourth hotel review in this entry. Since I’m currently on a train from Pisa to Rome, I can comment on the Alessandro Della Spina Hotel, in which I stayed in Pisa. Again, I went cheap, but this was at least listed as a 3-star hotel (which aren’t as nice as 3-star hotels in the U.S., but aren’t bad). Here, my experience was much better than in Milan. Even though I didn’t have an address for the hotel, just a general idea that it was to the southeast of the train station, I found it easy enough and it was only about a 10-minute walk away. The staff was extremely friendly. Although the room was small, typical for European hotel rooms, it was very nicely decorated and very clean. Internet service wasn’t free, but it was there and after Milan, I was extremely thankful for that. It was about a 20-25 minute walk to the main tourist areas in Pisa, so the location was adequate for that as well. The hotel also served free breakfast. There was nothing hot, but they had two of my favorite luncheon meats – mortadella and salami, so there is no way I can complain. All-in-all, I have to say that I was rather pleased with my experience at this hotel.

There you go – the first of a series of hotel reviews for this trip. Tune in next time for Rome, Athens, Thessaloniki . . .

Pisa Pisa

What I knew about Pisa before I went there is probably what you know about Pisa. It’s in Tuscany and has a famous tower that tilts to one side. I still don’t know much more about it except that it also has very good food (and also very bad food, if you’re looking for that). I chose to stop in Pisa for a few days as a short mid-week break between Milan and Rome. I enjoyed it immensely and am glad I gave it a shot.

I arrived at my hotel on a Monday afternoon. Although they had been calling for wet weather for a week, the rain still hadn’t arrived, so I decided to go out for a little walk around the neighborhood in which I was staying. I have to admit that since I hadn’t eaten all day, I stopped at a fast-food restaurant at the train station and had some pizza. The menu on the wall said “Margherita” pizza. For some reason, at this place a “Margherita” is a hot dog pizza. Yes, I said a hot dog pizza. On top of a cheese pizza were slices of hot dog. Now, I would ask who would ruin a perfectly good pizza by throwing a hot dog on it but, to be honest, this wasn’t a perfectly good pizza. It was kind of crappy all-around. I did stop by another place and grabbed a pistachio gelato to get the taste out of my mouth and I decided not to try any more food adventures that first night.

I walked down to the duomo, see I’m using that word all over the place now, and as part of that complex is the famous leaning tower. It was getting cold and getting dark, so I decided to put off climbing up the tower until the next day. I must say, though, that it fell into the category of structures (Eiffel Tower, Brandenburg Gate, Great Pyramid, Treasury at Petra) that just screamed “take my picture!!!” at me the entire time it was in my view. It was like an eight-year old beauty pageant contestant. Of course, I complied.

The next day was my only full day in Pisa, so I decided to make the most of it. Frankly, I’m not sure exactly how you make the most of it in such a small town, but I decided to eat better and climb to the top of the leaning tower. I got up early, had breakfast at the hotel (mortadella, salami and a chocolate croissant) and walked down to the duomo. On my way to the site, it started to snow. It seemed to be a little too warm for it to snow, but snow it did. If nothing else, it made the day much prettier.

I got to the duomo and purchased a fifteen euro ticket for a twenty minute climb to the top of the tower. First of all, do you want to know what you shouldn’t do if you are claustrophobic and acrophobic? You guessed it. Suffering from both afflictions, I threw caution to the wind and climbed the 300 steps to the top of the tower. There were some beautiful views of the small town of Pisa and the surrounding countryside, including snow-capped mountains off in the distance. Nevertheless, I just kept feeling like I was going to get bumped by one of the other tourists and fall off, so I walked around with my back to the wall, took some pictures and got the hell down.

Now, I was hungry again. I still wanted pizza, but preferably something without the great American tube steak on top. I, once again, stopped by a fast-food Italian food place, but this one didn’t appear to be a chain, despite it’s cheesy (formaggio-y) name – Pisa Pizza. I ordered a block (not a slice) of an Italian Sausage pizza that was quite good. If anybody reading this has ever been to Cambridge, Massachusetts, the pizza reminded me of something from Pinocchio’s. I guess that figures, seeing as I was in Tuscany. Anyway, I had a Guinness to go with it, figuring that I’d already experimented enough with Italian beers, and all was good in the world.

After walking around for a few more hours and taking some pictures, I returned to the hotel for a little nap and some internet usage. I woke up around five and thought that it was time for a good Italian meal. Here, as in Milan, most of the restaurants have a menu that has a first course and a second course. These can get a little pricy, and I’ve had some of both, but I hadn’t done the complete meal. When I left the hotel around six p.m., the snow from earlier in the day had turned to a proverbial “wintry mix” of rain and sleet and I knew that I wouldn’t be walking around for long. I went to a place I had seen earlier and bought a bottle of Tuscan wine for the evening and went looking for a place to eat.

I found a place on a little side street. I forget it’s name, but it’s only about three or four blocks from the train station. It offered the multi-course meal, with delicious-sounding options, and the price was reasonable, so I stopped in. There were only a handful of other customers, I assume in part because of the weather and in part because Pisa is a tourist town with tons of restaurants and it’s not really tourist season at the moment. (Side Note: I know that the classic cliché advice is to go to a place full of locals and eat there, and there can be some truth to that at times, but trust me with this – the restaurant that is full of locals typically is a McDonald’s. But I digress.) Anyway, I went in and ordered Linguine with Tomato and Bacon Sauce as the first (pasta) course and a pork chop with salad for the second (meat) course. Both were tremendous. The thick tomato/bacon sauce clutched to the pasta with all of its might. I didn’t recognize any seasoning on the pork chop other than salt, but it was cooked perfectly and needed nothing else. Along with a ¼ liter of wine, the whole meal only cost eleven euros and I believe that it was the best meal that I’ve had in Europe. But we’ll see what Rome has to offer.

After that, my bottle of wine and I went back to the hotel to watch the Champions League, where all of the talk was about Fiorentina, who went down tragically to Bayern Munich. (Did you know that Munich is Monaco in Italian? I didn’t. But on the television, they kept writing out the name of the club as Bayern Monaco.)

Those are the highlights of the Pisa trip. It was only two days. I enjoyed it a lot, but I think that two days probably was enough. Next up for me will be Rome, where I will spend a week. After that, I’m still not 100% sure, but I think I will head east to Athens and then come back around through Eastern Europe. We’ll see.