Hotels

Last week I finally got our hotels for Italy booked. The Florence hotel booking was rather simple since we used a travel agency website and booked online. Booking the hotel for Lake Como was a lot more work, partly because we're there smack dab during the long Easter weekend, but also because these little towns don't have hotels bookable through travel agents, at least not online. So I had to contact them separately by email. Quite a few were already booked or too expensive, so it came down to two hotels, both rather basic, one in the town of Varenna and one in Bellagio. The one in Varenna was cheaper, and I wanted to stay in that town more, but the one in Bellagio had rave reviews on Trip Advisor, which I always check to get an idea of what a hotel is really like. (What did people do before the internet? Just took a gamble, I guess.) We decided to go with the place in Varenna, though we couldn't find any feedback about it online.

I wanted to call the hotel to make the booking, so I could talk to someone there and get an idea of how nice they were and such. The first person I talked to, a young-ish sounding guy, said he didn't speak English and he didn't understand me. Oh. Ok. So I decided to fax my credit card details to hold the room and then sent an email asking if they could confirm the booking. A couple days later I had no reply. It was kind of weird because when I first wrote asking if they had a room and all, I got a reply quite quickly, but nothing now. I tried calling again and this time I got an older-sounding woman who also didn't speak English. At least the guy I had talked to could say, in English, "I don't understand, I don't speak English." This woman could only speak Italian. A few hours later, I got home, still had no email confirmation about the room, and I tried calling one last time. Again a woman, maybe the same one, who couldn't speak English. So I gave up, wrote an email saying our plans had changed and we weren't staying in Varenna anymore so I wouldn't need the room, and then promptly booked at the highly-recommended Bellagio hotel, from which I got an email confirmation straight away. Gah. 4 days later we had a place to stay.

Don't get me wrong, it's not that I don't want to stay somewhere where the owners can't speak English. In fact I'm a bit sad that so many people do speak at least a little English now so that when you go on holiday you don't have to speak the native langauge as much, though I am underneath it all relieved that I can just use English most of the time. I chose to go to a different hotel because I had no idea if we really had a room booked. They could have sent me an email in Italian; I could have figured it out. But whatever, I'm a bit relieved that we're now in this place in Bellagio that sounds really nice, and while I preferred to stay in Varenna, we can still visit there, and Bellagio is hardly a bad place to say, plus it's a bit more central to other villages on the lake. The trip there ain't gonna be fun though. We arrive in an aiport that Transavia calls a Milan airport, but it's really 40 km to the east near a town called Bergamo. But that's ok, we don't have to go via Milan to get to the lake, the lake is kinda between the two and just a bit to the north. But to get to Bellagio, we have to first take a bus shuttle from the airport to the main train station in Bergamo. We then take a train to Lecco at one southern tip of the lake and change trains to get to Varenna. We then head from the Varenna train station to the ferry that goes across to Bellagio. It's supposed to take at least 2 hours. At least we arrive bright and early in Italy, at about 8:30, but that means we're leaving Amsterdam at almost 7 and will have been up since about 4. I hope our room is ready for napping when we get there...

When I was looking around at the Florence hotels, I was getting excited to be going back there. It'll probably be more pleasant this time. I doubt it'll be so hot, and with O with me, I won't be getting hit on by Italian guys. I want to climb the cathedral dome and hang out more in the piazzas. It should be good.