Everyone needs a place to lay their head, for your first night or throughout your visit. Browse our growing list of reviews and book your stay.
It’s time for another of my Italy Q&A posts. Shyam sent me this note:
We’ll be coming from India to Italy, on 5th of April, 2008 , We 4 people will be attending vineitaly exhibition at Verona.Italy, on 6th & 7th. Please inform.
1. Which Hotel is near to the exhibition venue where we can stay at Verona?.
2. After 7th April we want to go and stay for a few days at Ancona
3. Which is the suitable hotel at Ancona?
4. We want to travel by train from Verona to Ancona on 8th, Please suggest the train route.
Thanks for the email, …
No Comments
Here’s another in my Italy Q&A series. Leon asks:
I’d like to spend a month or two in Florence. Can you suggest a flat rental or pensione? Inexpensive please.
Leon, I’d like to spend a month or two in Florence, too - so you’ve got a great idea there!
Rents in the historic center of Florence are expensive, but if you want to be in the middle of it all (and you do) then you’re going to want to concentrate on the historic center. There are actually several Florence hostels within a short walk of both the train station and the city’s major sights, all of which have kitchen facilities - so if you’re really on a budget you could always take a bed in a dorm room and have the ability to cook for yourself every so often.
If you’re requiring a bit more privacy, there are dozens of pensione- or locanda-type accommodation options in the historic center, too. Many of them have no more advertising than their name on a doorbell outside the building, but here are a few of the places I visited on my most recent trip through Florence which might be worth looking into (I’ll have reviews of them eventually, I just haven’t written them yet!):
No Comments
Finding a place to sleep in Rome is not the trouble. There are so many hotels in Rome that finding a vacant bed, even in the high season, probably won’t be an issue. Finding a bed that doesn’t cost you an arm and a leg, on the other hand, could be.
In Rome you have essentially two choices - sleep on a budget or sleep near the sights. If you choose the latter, your options are limitless, because every major tourist attraction is surrounded by hotels. You’ll pay a premium for these rooms, but you’ll also have the advantage of being right where you want to be as soon as you set foot outside your hotel. This is especially nice for the perfect evening passeggiata, and if your time in Rome is limited - provided, of course, that your budget allows for such a splurge.
If, on the other hand, your budget is limited, you’re not completely out of luck. Rome might not be cheap, but there are places to stay that will help you save money. The vast majority of them are concentrated in the neighborhood around the Termini Station, which means that they’re not ideally situated for a romantic evening stroll with the Colosseum as a backdrop, but there are tons of bus lines that run to Termini so you can get to and from where you’re going with ease.
No Comments
Venice is not a city of hostels. It’s not a city with any nightlife to speak of, or one that stays “open” until all hours. But it’s still on the agenda of most backpackers making their way through Europe - even the ones who are traveling on a serious budget and don’t have the money to spare on any one of the hundreds of high-end hotels crowding Venice’s streets and canals. So, where do all those budget travelers sleep?
Well, I didn’t say there were no hostels in Venice. Just not many. The largest one, and also the only one open year-round, is Ostello Venezia on the Giudecca. While many tourists never venture beyond a ten-minute walk of St. Mark’s Square, the hostel’s location on the Giudecca offers an incredible view across the water at the onion domes of St. Mark’s and the basilica’s bell tower. It’s exactly the kind of view you can’t get if you only stay in the middle of the square itself, which is a good enough reason to hop on a vaporetto and visit the Guidecca.
But I digress - back to the hostel itself.
2 comments
Finding a hostel in Italy isn’t as easy as you might think, depending on where you’re staying. The bigger cities have lots of options, but the smaller ones don’t always use the word “hostel” so it can be a bit confusing to know which ones are the budget accommodations. Plus, when you’re hunting for an Italy hostel online, many of the sites you’ll find have the exact same listings over and over again, so it’s nearly impossible to get a feel for a place beforehand.
Some of the hostel booking sites have good maps …
No Comments
As I’ve mentioned, there are a ton of budget hotels and hostels around the Roma Termini train station - and on my most recent visit to Rome, I checked out many of them. I could only stay in one, however (well, I suppose I could have stayed in a different place each night, but what a huge pain in the arse that would have been - and I’m basically lazy), and that was M&J Place Hostel.
M&J Place is located a few steps from Termini on the northeast side of the station on Via Solferino. The hostel has been in existence (and in the exact same location) for nearly 15 years, and is enthusiastically run by Mario (yes, that’s the M of M&J). If he’s anywhere near the front desk when you check in and your native language isn’t Italian, he’ll probably be able to chit-chat with you a little in your native tongue. I never asked him how many languages he speaks, but I’d be surprised if it wasn’t at least five or six…
At any rate, I stayed in a single private room at M&J Hostel for four nights, and every day as I came and went from the hostel and passed by the front desk, there were new people checking in or inquiring about rooms. It was easily the busiest hostel I visited during my stay in Rome, and Mario told me that many of the people who come to M&J do so without reservations. So while you can always take a chance on finding an available bed at M&J, if you know this is the place you want to stay you’d be better off reserving a bed in advance - especially during the high season.
>>Check out my other Rome hostels reviews, too!
No Comments
Here’s another in the Italy Q&A series. Maddy asks:
Yikes … we are struggling with accommodations in Milan because it is design week there April 14-21. We have checked in to apartments for rent and they are 2600 euros for the week.
We will be going to the fair as well…do you have any ideas for us?
Thanks for the question, Maddy! Unfortunately for anyone traveling to Milan, accommodations can be tough to find - especially on a budget anywhere near the city center - because the city is much more about business travel than it is about budget travel. And then when you throw in any holiday or “festival” period (that means anything like Fashion Week or any kind of trade show, which happen pretty frequently in Milan) you’re dealing not just with fewer vacant rooms but also higher prices.
It really depends on what your budget is, but there are a couple hotels I’ve stayed at which aren’t right smack dab in the center but are near enough to a Metro stop that you’ll be able to get anywhere you want to go relatively easily:
Hotel Piemonte
Hotel Mec
No Comments
If all you’ve got is a short time to visit Venice, you probably want your hotel to be as close to the main sights as possible. The problem with that idea is that in Venice that often means paying through the nose for a hotel room. Luckily for you, however, there’s another option - the Hotel Astoria is only a minute’s walk from St. Mark’s Square (provided the crowds don’t keep you standing still), and it’s so reasonably priced you might wonder what the catch is.
Well, with Hotel Astoria, the only catch is that the seriously low prices are only good during the low season. Come in the high season and you’ll pay less here than some other hotels in the area, but even a single without an en suite bathroom can cost as much as €105 in the high season. But if you’re visiting during the low season, this hotel is really a great deal.
Hotel Astoria isn’t fancy - there isn’t an elevator, for instance, and the breakfast (which is included) is pretty minimal (cereal, juice, brewed coffee, some yogurt and pre-packaged croissants) - but budget travelers don’t expect fancy anyway. What you can expect at the Hotel Astoria is a clean and safe place to stay just a few minutes from the Rialto Bridge and St. Mark’s Square. The building itself has character, and the staff is helpful - they all speak at least a little English.
No Comments
Traveling isn’t the most eco-friendly thing we can do, so it’s a good idea to try to lessen your environmental impact when we do travel. Thankfully, more and more tourist destinations are making it easy to do just that. One way to do it is to support the economies of smaller communities, helping them to maintain more of their traditions without resorting to bigger industries which could damage the environment.
For instance, in the Friuli-Venezia Giulia, eco-travelers can stay in cozy Alpine cabins which were slated to be demolished not so long ago. These rustic chalets were once homes for locals, but as the traditional means of making a living have gone out of fashion (things like farming), there are fewer people left who live in these Alpine villages year-round. While some people keep their chalets for summertime use, many families are abandoning their old homes altogether in search of work in the cities.
No Comments
Some travelers relish the idea of experiencing Italy the way the locals do - by getting off the beaten path and seeing something besides the big cities and tourist traps. One easy way to do this is to think differently about your accommodations in Italy.
I saw an article a couple of months ago about how “agricultural tourism,” known as agriturismo in Italian, is rising in popularity, and it didn’t surprise me at all. Agriturismo in Italy can take many forms, from a working farm where you get to take part in some of the daily agricultural activities to what feels like a plush B&B-style resort where the most energy you’ll expend is in lifting your fork to your mouth at mealtime. The common thread is that these are places out in the countryside, often surrounded by farmlands and away from other tourists.
Some agriturismo facilities will have cooking classes or horseback riding, others will organize day-trips to area attractions, and still others will provide opportunities for guests to milk or feed the livestock. It’s all about what you’re interested in - the options are nearly endless.
No Comments
