Our hotel for 3 nights in Venice (or, as I have explained, Mestre, a suburb of Venice) was the Hotel Ambasciata Venice, a small (20 room) hotel near the Mestre train station. I picked it for its location, its free parking, its free breakfast and its low price. I wasn’t disappointed. It was everything I hoped for and not much more. The room and private bath were clean and comfortable. It had a minifridge, a teapot and lots of closet and drawer space. It had a TV which, for us Americans in Italy, was nearly useless. We turned it on once for the unique pleasure of watching a movie in Italian.
The biggest problem was that we initially believed that the minifridge was not working at all. It was unplugged when we arrived so I plugged it in and the light came on. But even after an hour it didn’t seem to be chilling and the compressor didn’t feel warm, which to my engineering-oriented brain meant that it just wasn’t working. We called the manager on duty up to the room and he assured us that it was working fine, just give it another hour.
After an hour I could feel a slight chill inside and a slight warmth outside. So we decided to give it until morning.
It the morning it was cold inside. So it was working. Just at a glacial pace (so to speak).
Anyway, the hotel was quite satisfactory. 7 out of 10.
After our free breakfast we packed and checked out. We drove (no tolls) for about 5 hours through mostly flat terrain until we reached Bologna. I wanted to stop there as I had recently read a book set there and it sounded interesting. But I quickly discovered that driving in Bologna is even more insane than driving in Rome. While looking for a place to park we encountered a street fair and had a great deal of difficulty maneuvering through it. We finally found a place to park but decided to not stay. We drove on.
We found a little mountain town called Monghidoro and walked around there a bit and took some photos. The church wasn’t very interesting but the town did have a gas station and I was running low so we got 10 liters of expensive gas – enough to get us comfortably to Florence.
Getting “comfortably to Florence” took on a whole new meaning as we approached our hotel. The road was excruciatingly narrow and winding, to the point that Marlene began cursing me, swearing that she didn’t want to stay there and I must have been drunk when I booked it. And when we finally got there (safely), it was not obvious where to check in. I found a sign that said “Reception” finally and it was the right place. We got the key to our apartment (and, yes, it was really an apartment) and directions for getting there. The whole property was beautiful. Marlene began to smile again.
I will give a full review of this hotel in two days, when we leave. But it will be positive.