Hotels we stayed at in Italy, and what we think of the

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Jul 10th, 2000, 07:27 AM

Maya

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Hotels we stayed at in Italy, and what we think of the

Residentia San Pantaleo – we stayed here on our first three nights in Rome. Is on the 4th floor of an interesting historic building. You enter through a pair of gigantic wooden doors and go up the stairs or the wooden elevator on the right side. We reserved ahead and got a huge room (meant for four people) with air conditioning and a television and breakfast. We paid 170,000 a night (+-$80) which is really cheap, probably because it is not a hotel. We had a view of the street connecting the Compo de Fiori to Vitorio Emanuel II. The windows close so tightly that it took us a while to figure out we were above a main road and we didn’t realize we were looking out to the Compo de Fiori fountain. The room has very high ceilings and is nicely decorated with antiques but not stunning. We were mainly impressed by the view, with the price and especially with the location. We walked everywhere – 5 min. to the Piazza Navona and Compo de Fiori, - 10 min. to the river and Panteon – 15 min. to Piazza Venetiza and the Trevi Fountain. We were not impressed with breakfast which consisted of two prepackaged sweet rolls and two prepackaged croissants, and the fact that when we made the mistake of paying with dollars they charged us about 10,000 liras extra (still this was the cheapest place we stayed at). Overall we think this was very good value for money and recommend it. Hotel Margutta – In spite of its recommendations in travel books, we didn’t like this hotel. The hotel is on Via Lauria, which is a small street between Piazza dell Popolo and the Spanish Steps. We paid 195,000 Lira (+-$100) for the room which had no television or air conditioning. (Probably because this area is extremely touristy) The room was extremely hot there seemed to be hot water pipes underneath the floortiles, which added to the heat. The shutters of the floor to ceiling window could not be closed. Because of this I felt uncomfortable with the window open since it seemed like all the other rooms could see into ours and also the rooms faced the back area of a food bar and I was convinced some four or more legged creature would crawl in at night. In addition to this the room was small and the walls very thin – the bathroom of the room next to us was about a foot from our bed. The hotel did serve a good breakfast of fresh rolls and croissants topped with orange flavored sugar. And the bathroom was clean. Realis Uffizi – This hotel was the prettiest and also the most expensive we stayed at. We paid 270,000 Lira (+-$126) a night. The location of the hotel is wonderful, with the public rooms (sitting and breakfast room) right above the Piazza Sengora and look out onto it. The guestrooms are in the back. Our room was very pretty with a canopy bed and antiques all in a creamy off-white color. Breakfast was good to with fresh rolls and croissants, cereal, coffee and juice. It would have been perfect except that they seem to be renovating the building. From around 8:15am we could hear them getting the tools together and at 8:30 am they start working with the hammer and drill this went on until around 5:30pm on the days we were there. We weren’t told anything about this when we reserved the room or when we checked in. When we asked the people at the desk there they made a whole show of not understanding what we were talking about. In the end they did offer us another room but with the same noise. We stayed in our room and asked for a price reduction, but didn’t get it. I don’t know when they are due to finish renovating.

Jul 10th, 2000, 07:47 AM

sandi

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Maya, Thanks for the info. We haven't decided on our Rome hotel yet and this helps. I've seen several "residentia" listings...what is that? How are they different from hotels? Thanks again.