Italy
Venice
Hotel
Galleria's Homepage
$50 (in 2001) per night, breakfast included. Shared bathroom.
I suggest you pay a little more and get a room ensuite which will be much, much
larger and more comfortable. Their single bedroom is about the size of most
Amercian wardrobe closets. It has a sink, but nothing else.
Well Recommended
Right on the canal and well recommended. It was the only place that I have to
recommend in spite of not having a private bathroom in their single room. The
breakfast is mediocre too, but the location, as they say, is priceless. Next
to one of the only three bridges over the Grand Canal, and right next to the
British Embassy and to the Venice Academy of Fine Arts Gallery. If it's the
only gallery you visit in Venice, walk the few steps from the hotel into this
one and you'll get a cross-section of the best that has been selected over the
centuries of Venice's prominent fine artists. Also, right next to the bridge,
literally, just steps from the hotel, is the public transportation water-bus
stop. From here you can easily get fast, though usually crowded, transportation
to all places worth seeing. The other way is to hit the old Venetian bricks
and do it on foot. Do both and you'll get familiar with this unique city in
no time at all. Crossing that bridge gets you to St. Marcus Square and the Doges
Palace in no time at all.
Florence
Hotel Pensione Ferretti
email
them here
Via Delle Belle Donne 17
$50 incl.
breakfast. I think I paid less, but that's what their website quotes right now.
Must be recommended. The rooms are large and high ceilinged. The location is
excellent. A laundromat and lots of restaurants are close by. The breakfast
is included, but bring your own. However, the friendly owner provides free evening
Internet access and cool sodas and water all day long. The wife is from South
Africa, and the whole family is fluent in English. The son is getting involved
in the business as well. A good clean place from which to explore the amazing
treasures of Florence. A walk to the Duomo is just 10 minutes, right past some
of the best shopping areas in Italy (this one was already famous in Roman times).
The river and its old and unique covered bridge, the Ufficio (now a museum with
a huge collection of art, and the Old Palace with the real and original statue
of Michelangelo's David in front are all just very short walk from the pensione.
Rome
Hotel Pensione Joli
(Tel: 011 390 06 3241 854)
Via Cola di Rienzo 243
About
$50 a night, incl. breakfast.
A tough
one to find and a long walk was necessary, but once I had the transportation
system down, it became a cinch and the proximity to Vatican City and more importantly
to me, the Rome USO, made it very acceptable to me. Take Metro A from the mainstation
and get off at Octaviano. Then walk toward the Vatican and hang a left at the
big square. They'll give you directions when you call them. The personnel is
friendly, the breakfast sucks, the room is clean, and while I recommend this
place, there may be more convenient alternatives around. Having said that, the
Vatican Museum holds an unbelievable amount of art and treasures and is just
a few minutes away, as is the Sistine Chapel. There are stores and restaurants
everywhere and opportunity to walk along the Tiber River, just minutes away,
and visit Castle Saint Angelo, which began its existence as Hadrian's Tomb.
Out the door, to the left, two short blocks away there is a large supermarket
in the basement of a department store. Going the other direction there is an
indoor farmers market. Rome is large, the subway, (get a week's pass), goes
everywhere, and walking is a great alternative to see things that many who travel
exclusively by subway will never see. A great stop from which to start walking
in any direction is Barberini Plaza. First of all, there is an Easy Everything
Internet place, but from there you can either walk up Via Veneto, down to the
Forum Romanum, across to the Spanish Steps, or on to the nearby main railway
station to get magazines or transportation for day trips to many nearby locations.
I even took an express to Pisa from Rome. There and back in a day.
RRecommended for its excellent location
European Hotel/Hostel finder lists Pensione Joli and many alternatives as well as youth hostels.
Also here: The Little Wonder Hotels of Rome
Naples
Best Western Hotel Paradiso
Via Catullo 11, Napoli, Italy, Phone: 39 081 2475111
My discounted rate was around $70 a night, including superb breakfast (4 star hotel).
Click on the image to be taken to the hotel website
This
really is the view from the breakfast room. And what a breakfast. It is a small
hotel, not easy to find on your own, until you've got the Naples transportation
system down cold. It is best to take the subway from the main railroad station
to Mergellina and then take a cab from there to the hotel. I recommend this
place. It is not cheap and usually packed. Reserve early and get whatever discount
you can from the
Best Western hotel finder website
Highly Recommended
I used
the hotel as a base from which to visit Pompeii and Herculanum, the two fantastic
Roman cities that were buried in time by an outburst of Mt. Vesuvius under thick
layers of ash and lava 2000 years ago.
Sicily
Not another country, but sometimes it seemed that way. The population
is genetically heavily infused by Hellenic or Dorian Greeks, who colonized the
island over 2000 years ago. This also is the reason one finds some of the most
beautiful and complete Greek temples and lots of archeological sites here. Moreover,
Moslems, Osmanic Turks, and even Normans are among those who left their physical
and genetic imprint on this island.
I had no reservations anywhere and simply went either by guidebooks or got the
necessary information from the hotel guides that are available at each of the
helpful tourist information offices in the railroad stations.
Syracusa
Albergo Aretusa (093 12 42 11)
Inexpensive.
This may well be the prettiest and historically most interesting town in Sicily.
Stepping out of the station, go left and you'll find immediately three small
hotels. Any one of them will do. The first one on the right side is where I
stayed. Simple, inexpensive and forget about the breakfast (L5000), but the
coffee is good (L2000). The little town has a solitary and well attended supermarket
up the street and to the right at the traffic circle. On the same side of the
street, the other way, toward the island, a small bookstore has internet service.
There are also interesting little delis around. A nice one is right next to
the park at the traffic circle, where you can get decent food to take to the
hotel. The town's antique treasures in the Archeological Museum and Roman and
Greek sites are world famous and rival anything that might be found in Greece
or the rest of Italy.
Catania
Hotel Roma
Inexpensive.
Low budget and definitely
not one of my favorites. They refuted the price they had listed in the 2001 hotelguide for
Catania. I stayed there, under protest, but since it was for just one night,
I let it pass. NOT recommened. There is a long list of hotels of all price ranges
available from the very informative tourist office on platform 1 of the station.
In front of the station are the buses that will take you to Mt. Etna. The ticket
is purchased in the nearby (small street across from the station) bus ticket
office (where I recall seeing the most sexy young Italian girl I have seen on
the entire trip - think young Sophia Loren). Don't worry, she won't be there
when you get there. Since I arrived at Catania, as planned, very early in the
day, I immediately had the hotel lock up the luggage and took off for Mt. Etna.
After my return in the late afternoon I unfortunately did only pursue food and
not walk around the town more. The next morning at 0820 I was on my way to Agrigento
and from there immediately to Palermo, cities that rank much higher on my list
of places to see.
Palermo
Hotel Sole
Corso Vittorio Emanuele, 291
90133 Palermo Tel. +39.91.581811
including excellent breakfast.
A
Palermo Hotel Finder
It's a package tourist hotel, but I have to recommend
it. It was not really cheap, but at that point I've had it with one star and
below hotels and settled happily into this nice three-star in the middle of
Palermo. Excellent breakfast included. Continue on this street and in one direction
you will end up at one of the great sights of Palermo, the Norman Chapel. Be
prepared for a real spiritual experience and feast your eyes on the incredible
artistry that survives to this day. Masses of tourist groups push though it
each day, but, going by myself, I took time to just hang around and blocking
out the tour groups, let myself be transported by the inspirational designs.
I used Palermo as a staging area to visit the truly awesome Greek archeological
sites in the south of Sicily. I did it the hard way. Find a tour (let the hotel
help you) and see them all by tour bus. As much as I dislike tours, in this
case, other than renting a car, a tour is the best alternative. It can be done
by train, but after that it's hitchhiking and jogging many kilometers in hot
Sicily with hardly any public transportation available in the countryside.
