Italy_hotel

Hotel Italia

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The places we went to...

Our flight plan was Hong Kong ® Frankfurt ® Rome; and then, Milan ® Frankfurt ® Hong Kong. While in Italy, we spent time at:

Rome/ Roma (ahem!) - 3 days

Florence/ Firenze - 2 days

Siena - 1 day

Venice/ Venezia - 2 days

Milan/ Milano - 1 day

The places we stayed at ...

As usual, we were delayed in booking hotels to stay in. We researched the web and took a lot of advice from the regulars on the Fodor's forum. Several phone calls to numerous hotels followed the pattern "Hello! - Pronto! - I wanted a booking for 3 nights from April 2 to April 4 - So sorry! We are totally booked". By some stroke of luck, we managed bookings at 3/4 star hotels located close to the city centres. We realised how useful this was when we found that most of our sightseeing was just a walk away!

~ TIP: Never book hotels on the outskirts even if they are cheaper: you waste valuable time travelling, and you don't get a good feel of the place.

The hotels we booked were:

Rome - Hotel Miami is very well located on the busy Via Nazionale, within walking distance of the historic city and the termini (railway station).

Florence - Pensione Pendini, charming old fashioned pension overlooking the busy Piazza della Repubblica, one of the main town squares. Pensione Pendini was recommended strongly by Fodor's. It seemed straight out of E.M. Forster's A Room with a View - old Victorian furniture, water colours on the walls, floral wall paper and wooden floors. We could almost imagine the charming young ladies who came to Florence to do watercolours, admire the Botticellis, or just to recover from a broken love affair staying at this place!

Venice - Minotel Marconi is located very close to the Rialto bridge on the Canal Grande. In Venice, location is everything, and hotels charge accordingly. So even though this was the most expensive hotel of the bunch, we got the least service - no bell boys and no elevators! Beware if you've got big bags to lug...

Milan - Hotel Molise was more of a businessman's hotel that was going really cheap over the weekend. It was okay for an overnight's stay, and Dario, our friend in Milano, did us a real favour by booking it for us. This hotel is very close to Linate Airport too.

Its time for our city tours to begin. Start roaming in Rome by clicking here.

Or return to our Wanderlust web page.

May 08 2003