(Thanks to the Grateful Dead for the title of this post and
this is part three of ?)
I seem to be all over the map with any order of this trip (bad
pun intended), yet I do not care. I do want to talk about hotels. Before we
left I booked some hotels and left some to be booked as we drove. One of the main
reasons for this trip (actually there were a few reasons or goals) was to see
Europe, not just the large cities, but the small ones too. I hoped to meet a
few people and talk to them. Unfortunately the time rush made the meeting of
locals not as plentiful as I liked, however we did stop at places along the way
based on how things went.
I booked hotels in Lisbon, Rome, the last night in Lisbon
and the Algarve region in Portugal which was a last minute before we left
decision because I wanted to make sure we spent at least one day on the beach.
I thought we were going to spend a few days on beaches throughout the trip, but that didn’t
happen so I am glad I booked one for a couple of nights in south Portugal.
Overall we stayed 21 nights in Europe with 11 being prebooked. This still left
us quite a few random stop opportunities.
And we used a booking site as we went and yes deciding where
to stay 200 or 300 kilometers up the road at some random service area can be a
bit frustrating, yet overall we did well.
Only one hotel we regretted, one was forgettable, one was
almost forgettable, yet it was in Salamanca and we had such a great time there
that even the hotel was okay. There is an internal family joke about why the
better half choose that one while driving. It was nice, not rememberable yet
again since it was close to the Cathedral and the night life near the University
it worked out fine.
Of the prebooked hotels the one in Lisbon was good and
suited our purposes well. It had parking so I could leave the car and located near
a metro stop. The hotel in Rome had two of my requirements, parking and was
within walking distance, just barely, of the Vatican. It wasn’t fancy at all,
had good breakfasts which most came close to having good breakfasts, and as I
had mentioned in another post all very similar. We weren’t staying in resorts
or high dollar hotels since we are on a budget in our daily lives so our
vacations have that need also. So yes we knew hotels were going to be a crap shoot.
Yet as I said above only a couple didn’t make the grade. We stopped in
Montpellier France and we didn’t choose well there. We couldn’t find the
entrance even with GPS, parking was a nightmare, shared with a mall, and old
and dirty. Unfortunately while trying to find our hotel we ran across a really
nice one nearby, but who knew. We had prepaid while driving since we needed a
place to stay for the night.
We got up and left the next morning, didn’t even try the
breakfast there if I remember correctly.
Again overall the hotels turned out well considering
everything. As regular readers know I keep talking about writing fiction. I send
in stories and get rejected all the time. And one of the reasons why I am
learning is because I do not enhance my stories. I do not want to say embellish
because as a writer you shouldn’t embellish, you need to enhance or dive deep
into what you are writing so a reader can relate. One area is I do not engage
readers with the various senses we have as humans. I am learning and rewriting
some stories to try and work on adding more in depth descriptions of what a
person encounters or needs to encounter in the story to really put them where I
want them to be. I love telling stories, yet writing has a couple of those four
letter words that needs to be accomplished, work and effort (yes 6 letters, but
you get the drift).
The reason I bring this up is because some of the hotels
need some enhancements. The first is the one we stayed in Assisi Italy. This
one is where we got stranded and that story will come later, but we were
stranded and because of that it made some of the stay very frustrating, yet the
early mornings and evenings when we could just stop and smell the roses so to
speak were beyond my ability to describe well. And when I say smell the roses,
you could smell the flowers in the morning. The hotel was not exactly in the
town, just a short drive away. It was so peaceful in the morning, just sitting
at a table near their pool, the smell of the flowers, the quiet, the bee that
made you change tables, even the sound of the workers somewhere in the building
either cleaning or picking up plates didn’t interfere with the peace you felt. One
morning we sat at a table under neath an overhang or extension of a roof, so it
was in the shade looking over the front walkway, that had other scattered
tables in the sun. The pool was to our right with some pool loungers around it,
yet very still. And it was green all around the hotel, shrubs, other vegetation
along with the flowers encircled quite a bit of the hotel. This was somewhat of
a small property, just a few floors and one building, but not a rectangle so it
avoided the standard hotel vibe.
And then in the evenings, forget it. We could sit on a
somewhat large balcony, had three or four tables just to sit. One evening we
opened a bottle of wine we had bought in Portugal, and just watched the moon
rise. The sun was setting behind the building so we really didn’t see a sunset,
but we could look out over a large valley with a small town in the center, the
moon rising in front of us, nice large hills all green surrounding the valley. Our
anger and frustration melting away as we sat there trying to make sense of what
was happening all in this strangely peaceful paradise. We really needed this
place at this time.
Finally after two full days we got our situation partially
resolved, (still waiting on the rest) and on the third day we took off again.
Yet first we went and visited the Cathedral in Assisi and the town. We probably
spent five or six hours there overall. As always we enjoyed the peace and the
art that fill Cathedrals in Europe (another one of our goals was to just stop
and see various Cathedrals throughout our journey and we saw a few). Assisi was
great, there were quite a few tourists for such a small town, yet we enjoyed it
immensely. The better half picked up some presents for the family there and
then we headed into the town. We did some more shopping and had lunch. All in
all it was late (as always) when we left and now we had to make some decisions
on what we wanted to do next. We had to choose between Tuscany or moving on. We
decided to go to Pisa since I had always wanted to see the tower since I first
heard about it as a elementary age child. Wine or tourism, sometimes the
choices are hard.
So we headed to Pisa and for some strange reason we picked a
hotel to stay outside of Pisa and when a person says it is off the beaten path
this one was off the beaten path, yet it was a great choice. No it wasn’t super
fancy, nice, but not a resort, maybe close to being one. It wasn’t a large
property, but not small. There were two aspects well three when you consider it’s
local is beautiful. One was the smell. I have been to the Arboretum here in
Dallas and other similar type environments, yet the smell of flowers at this
hotel was I don’t want to say overpowering because it wasn’t, but it was very
pervasive throughout the property and it was wonderful. My wife said they were
gardenias. I don’t know, but it was wonderful. Like many out side of town
hotels in Europe you can open the windows and breath in the atmosphere and here
the smell of the flowers was intoxicating for whatever that means, yet it was.
We use to live in a apartment right next to downtown Dallas
and they had a honeysuckle type plant that ran up the railings as you climbed
the steps to your floor. In the spring, the smell of the flowers reverberated
throughout the stair area and up and down the hallways. We use to love it. Here
at this hotel it was the same, yet it was everywhere you walked.
And that was the other reason this hotel unknown to us was
popular. It had the most eclectic walkway and grounds. It had a real nice pool
area, somewhat large, the usual loungers and tables around it. Yet just on the
other side was a large lawn area with quite a few tables and lighting where you
could hold an outdoor reception, and beyond that or next to it that wandered
away and back to the hotel was this wide variety of pop sculptures. I say pop
sculptures for lack of a better word. This wasn’t Italian art like in the Cathedrals,
but it was some locally made (?) or they had someone put together various
pieces made of wood, not really stone, but something of course they were
painted. There is no theme here. Some were animals, one was I think a statue of
Andy Warhol, some other items, sorry, can’t remember off the top of my head at
the moment.
We got there early enough for a change to enjoy dinner and
it was great. I eventually looked up what the name of the meal in English was
that we ate. It was great. It was Italian and the whole environment was as I mentioned
one of the reasons for the trip. We were deep in the Italian country side
seeing Italy.
Okay this is getting long so more about the other hotels and
the rest of the trip to come. And I am going to make a separate post with a few
pictures. I don’t think I am going to go into descriptions, just post, maybe a
couple of posts as I write.
Cheers
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