Category Archives: Lodging

Strike One, So Bus It Is

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We knew today would be a slow day since we either had a train or bus midday, so we arrived at the breakfast room after 8:00. Throughout the night, when I was awake, I’d check the train site and see no news about cancelations and also saw that they were still selling tickets for today’s trains. Same thing when I woke. Same thing when in the breakfast room.

Then Dan checked the news. All trains were canceled.

I guess the train company will still happily sell tickets? Or maybe once you get to the payment page it then doesn’t work. Who knows? But in any case, this saved us a trip to the train station to see if our train would be one to still be working. I’m tremendously grateful for the Facebook Portugal page I visit: a man who lives here had suggested to everyone visiting that we schedule a bus just to be on the safe side. If we didn’t use it, the loss was rather minimal (for us it was under $10). I’m not sure if I can get refunded the $34 we paid for the train, but that, too, isn’t a huge amount so if we don’t get it returned I won’t be weeping buckets.

After breakfast Dan spent time writing in his journal, and I spent time trying to communicate with a few people. For some reason email wasn’t sending via the Apple mail app today, yet the outgoing mail would disappear. Ah, the woes of my life! (JOKING!) So on to the browser I went, and emails were sent. (That last sentence is your poem for the day, btw.) Showers were taken. And then, after packing, it was time to go downstairs to see if we could print up our luggage tags the bus company provides, as well as our bus tickets. Yes, they could. Done.

We walked to the bus station and eventually our bus showed up. It was nearly full, but we all have assigned seats so no problem getting to where we needed to be. Then off we went.

About an hour and twenty minutes later we were at the Porto Campanhã station. Hello Porto! We were told by our walking company, Portugal Green Walks, to meet our driver at the ticket area for the train station rather than at the bus end of the building. It was a trek, but we got there (he was probably waiting for a good fifteen minutes), and our driver took us to our hotel. We are staying at the Porto Neya hotel. It’s very “green oriented” and is quite a nice hotel. Green Walks is responsible for choosing this hotel for us, and they are in charge of the next six nights as well, so I look forward to seeing where we will be staying!

After getting situated in our room we walked east (at least I think it’s east) to the Ribiera to see if we could get a light meal. Heh. Hardly need to write “if” as it’s a huge tourist spot. The meal wasn’t cheap, but still quite welcome.

Then it was back to the hotel. I didn’t really think to take more than this one photo below. I think my brain is still on the bus.

We were to meet soon with someone from Green Walks to go over our trip. He arrived early, and we went down to meet him and get what we needed. This company is quite organized: we have a booklet, vouchers for our stays and boat trip, a map app (really a bike app but it works for walkers as well) that will even let us know if we are off route, and they also gave us t-shirts and a power bank. Nice!

Then back to our room we went, and eventually we had to decide what to do for dinner. Dan did a bit of a search (at least I think so) for spots, but because our hotel is a bit away from the main drag, and because we know tomorrow is an early rising day, we finally opted to go to the rooftop bar and see if they had things that were going to fill us up enough that we could just eat there. The server said they had “snacks”. Now, to us, snacks means things like potato chips, olives, peanuts, and the like. But we decided to give it a go. He brought the menu. Ohhhh riggghhhht. “Snacks” means “tapas”! So there was certainly enough to fill us and keep us from going to the restaurant at the hotel (which would have been much more expensive). The view was lovely, and we had a very relaxing time.

ADDED NOTE: Oh … I nearly forgot: the bar is on the rooftop. The restaurant is on the ground floor. My guess is the food comes from the latter. I noticed a robot bringing food to our server. I felt like I was in the Jetsons!

Back at our room I thought to shoot a photo through our window, despite the reflections. The smarter person in the room went and opened the door. Heh. Right … that works better! As I wrote earlier, I think I left my brain on the bus. I feel sorry for the person who finds it!

Tomorrow is our first 6:00 AM day. I think, though, with the upcoming excitement, it won’t be all that difficult to handle that.

Boa noite!

New “Innovative” Ideas To Watch For

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I’m in the process of searching for hotels, which means the spreadsheet is open and ready to go. First I frequently do a search on “best places to stay in” the city, village, town. I’ll come up with a number of sites with that search. I tend to prefer those that are done by an individual. Nearly always, for a first time visit, it’s suggested that we stay in either “city center” or the “historic city center”. If there is a walled portion of the city that is where I tend to want to be.

As I’ve written before, I compare the hotel site, Booking.com, Expedia, and sometimes even the United site (although paying with miles has proved to be unwise) for the cost. I check Trip Advisor, and I see how the hotel (or B&B or whatever) is ranked on Google. It’s a long process, but it helps me process everything. I also map out all the hotels on Google Maps, so Dan and I can see where we’d be staying. In most cases I can see the street view, and “wander” the area a bit to get an idea of the neighborhood. And yes, I check Rick Steves’ book as well if I have that country’s book on my iPad.

But recently I’ve realized there are a couple of other things to watch out for.

First, Expedia often has the best price, even over the hotel site. But you really have to read the fine print. If there is a “resort fee” or a “facility fee” or anything like that, Expedia may not include that and you pay at the hotel. (Booking may have the same issue, but there price has always been higher anyway so I just use them for their hotel ranking and I read their reviews.) I also found that, when booking through Expedia, I’m not always given a great room: the hotel loses the Expedia fee and I suspect they flag any of us who book that way, but I can’t be sure.

But the most recent issues? First, there’s the “will one of us have to climb over the other to get to the bathroom in the middle of the night?” Some newer hotels have very small rooms (and lovely lower prices), but there is no way in the world I will choose them if both ends of the bed are up against a wall. Forget it.

The most surprising thing of all, however, are the new “innovative” (??) bathrooms. They are frosted glass. Some are in the middle of the room. I have no interest in being watched while in the bathroom, even through frosted glass (and some even appear to be clear glass!). Some have no door at all. Again, no interest in that. And in the middle of the night I’m sure Dan would love me turning on that bathroom light! (Yes, I bring a nightlight, so maybe I’d not need to, but still ….) I recently wrote to one hotel because someone mentioned the lack of privacy in their bathroom. The hotel wrote to say I could rest assured that all the rooms had bathroom doors … except the most expensive that is. It, instead, was an “open concept” room. No door. No privacy. No thank you.

CitizenM hotel has both, by the way: bed against the walls and a very innovative bathroom.

Planning a trip really keeps me on my toes! (And my eyes are starting to go bonkers.)

Lodging

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Some might wonder how I figure out lodging. Or maybe no one does. It could be I’m writing this for myself. Who knows?!

If we are staying in a city that has a walled in area, or a formerly walled in area, I usually choose to stay in or near that. I do read up on places, both online and in various travel books (like Rick Steves). If there is a part of the city (or village) that has narrow alleys and streets I tend to enjoy staying there. I also look to see which streets are larger and busier: I don’t want those if I can help it! In big metropolitan cities I check to see if we are doing anything that might require night walking (as we did in Paris) and find a place that would allow for that. And sometimes I want to be a bit closer to the train station, as long as it’s close to the part of the city or village we want to see and is not too unsafe. I always book places that allow for cancelations, even while knowing I have to pay more then. (One of these trips I’d love to truly wing it and not book a thing, but I have a feeling my better half wouldn’t want to chance that!) Oh, and I also rarely, if ever, pay for breakfast. We just don’t need to eat that much! Sometimes a place will come with breakfast, and then we have no problem indulging.

Here is a list of where we stayed for this trip, and I’ll repost a few photos —

Heidelberg: For this it was an easy choice! We stayed with Greg and Jan. It was a great location and, well, we even got some nice meals at their place! Plus they are such fun to be with.

Riquewihr: This spot was Greg’s doing, so I didn’t have to look. We stayed at Gite Riquewihr “C’est Beau la Vie Alsace”. It was in a fabulous location. We could walk in a couple minutes time and get to the center of things. Our place for three nights was above the owners. We had two bedrooms, two baths, and a kitchen.


Nürnberg: I wanted to stay within the old walled in part of the city: Dan and I had passed through on our way to Bayreuth some years back, and I loved that area. The trouble was that we were going during a very popular time of year. They are known for their Christmas Market, and so many of the hotels didn’t allow for cancelations. Although I dn’t care to stay in an American chain, we ended up at the Holiday Inn Nürnberg City Centre. It really was a convenient location: inside the wall, but not near the crowds, and walking distance to the train station. And it was a nice place. I still would have preferred something other, but so it goes.

München: (Yes, I like to try and use the name of the city as those who live there would. I’m goofy that way, I guess.) Again, Greg chose this place, We stayed at Hilton Munich City. The location was nice. Not in the middle of the crowds, so quiet, but walking distance to a number of areas. It used to be close to the concert hall, and perhaps will be so again after renovations, but it turned out our concert was a cab drive away. Our room was very nice, but it was funny: Greg & Jan’s room had a good coffee machine. Ours did not. Greg is much higher up on the “Hilton chain” so maybe that’s why …? (And I forgot to take photos, I guess!)

Paris: For this we wanted to be walking distance to the opera house. I would have liked to find something less costly, but Paris is … well … Paris! We ended up at the Hotel St. Petersbourg Opera & Spa. The spa bit is wasted on us since we aren’t spa people. This is the place that had a small bar and had the worst cocktails ever. But I’ll let that go. Unless they ask me. The room was fine, and typically small. The one funny thing was that the toilet was in its own space and one had to walk across the room to a sink. But we managed.

Montpellier: We were quite near the Place de la Comédie, but not RIGHT in it, which would have been noisy. I thought the location of Hotel d”Aragon was great. Rooms were a bit odd, with the carpet that looked like wood. But it was totally fine. We were up one flight of stairs and there was no elevator, but we managed.

Zaragoza: Not an American chain, but a chain nonetheless, we stayed at Catalonia El Pilar. It was a good location, the room was nice, we had a good view outside our window, and it was quiet.

Madrid: We opted to stay off of busy streets, even while Rick Steves recommended some. He just advised that we ask for a higher floor on those streets. But while he might ask for a higher floor and get it, we weren’t so certain we would. So I found a place very close to the opera house (even though we weren’t going to an opera), and it looked interesting. The Hotel Meninas was really in a nice location, and it was quiet most of the time.

Manhattan: And now for the smallest and most expensive room on our trip. The only place to open luggage was on the bed, the closet could only hold Dan’s clothes, and the bathroom door ran into the bed! The room had no coffee machine, but did come with $10 for each of us each day for coffee and pastry at a bakery connected to the hotel. I think, though, it might be our last stay at the Hotel Belleclaire. It’s in a great location for getting up to The Bronx, but it’s just so very costly. (And yes, I forgot to take a photo. I think I was just so shocked by the size of the room.)

So there you go … all the places we stayed. Over ‘n out.