My Hotel In Palermo
I stayed in the four-star Palazzo Sitano.
The only problem was that I’d booked a single room and it wasn’t ready when I arrived, so I got an enormous and very comfortable suite for the same price.
I liked it and would stay there again.
It says on their web site, that it is close to the centre of everything, and I certainly didn’t have to go far to the station and important sites like the cathedral.
And the staff were excellent, as was the map I was given to find my way around.
the television system was also very good and remembered the last channel, when it was switched off.My Sony in this house does that, so why does the usual television in a hotel forget?
Pensionat Udden
These pictures show the guest house, where we stayed on the holiday. Their web site is here.
The pictures show the lake behind the hotel. Just as with houses, location is so important.
Nothing was too much trouble for the owners and they coped with my gluten free diet magnificently.
I also slept well in a comfortable bed, but then I would only report if I didn’t. With me that’s usually the sign of a bad hotel.
It was a very convenient place for what we were doing and I wouldn’t have any qualms about staying there, if I should make a further trip to the area.
The Premier Inn, Lambeth
This is the first nomination for the Carbuncle Cup.
I think the building merits its inclusion. And don’t take my word for it, this was said on the Dezeen website in their page about the nominations.
The Premier Inn in Lambeth is a travesty in more ways than one – we shudder at its lumpen form and mourn the building demolished to make way for it.
I can never understand, why in some places like St. Pancras, we get sympathetic additions to old buildings and in other places we just don’t!
The original building was the General Lying-In Hospital.
Ivy Bank
I saw this sign in Shanklin and it reminded me of the worst hotel I ever stayed in.
Ivy Bank
It was in Monmouth in Wales and my father used to tell the tale with gusto. My parents, my sister and myself, had arrived late in the afternoon in the town and as ever, my father hadn’t booked a hotel, so he went searching and found this hotel called Ivy Bank. It had an air about it like a house, where someone has just died and everybody except for the maiden aunt has moved out. I can’t remember who slept where, but I can remember going down for breakfast and we sat like dummies waiting for the other guests or some staff to turn up. In the end the lady, turned up dressed like some stereotype out of films where doors creek and virgins scream. But she was carrying an enormous tray covered in every sort of food to make up the largest English or more truthfully Welsh, breakfast I’ve ever seen.
It was good and we ate well, before my father paid for the rooms and food and we left.
It later transpired that my mother hadn’t slept, as she could hear, what she thought were rats running all over the place.
Since that date, I have vowed never to set food in any house, pub, restaurant or hotel called Ivy Bank.
Bottoms And Alcohol Shouldn’t Mix
I thought this story about a nudist hotel wanting an alcohol licence, was typical of some of the narrow-minded attitudes that still prevail in parts of the UK. Here’s a flavour.
But the application has been met with a bevy of objections that people living nearby are already copping an eyeful from guests who haven’t been drinking.
Councillor Robert Alden fears that an alcohol licence would turn the spa into a strip club and that it would attract “local youths and trouble makers”.
I suppose that summers like this are rare, so the venture will probably be killed by the British weather anyway.
Wandering Around Stratford
This morning I went to Stratford and had a look round to see if anything was open yet at the Olympic Park!
There was a lot of activity, but opening is a few days off yet!
i didn’t find any new restaurants that can do gluten-free, although I did find a Holiday Inn, which would be in an ideal place to stay, if you got a good deal.
The bridge mentioned in the captions to the pictures is the one that links Stratford station to Eastfield and the Olympic Park.
From Hamburg To Osnabruck By Train
Although, I was intending to go from Hamburg to Amsterdam, as I said in this post, things didn’t work out as I and probably Deutsche Bahn intended.
The train was a few minutes late out of Hamburg and my First Class carriage seemed to be missing from the German IC train I was on. (Note the missing E!) Or possibly I couldn’t get near it, as the aisles were blocked with cases. If I’ve complained about Virgin’s services to Glasgow in the past, then this was complete travel hell, that I’ve never encountered on British trains in the worst of times.
At Osnabruck, I was supposed to change onto another IC train for Amsterdam, but of course by the time we got there I’d missed it.
I waited for perhaps two hours on the station at Osnabruck and nothing seemed to be happening. There was no information posted and those in Information, told me to wait for the next Amsterdam train. But they had no idea of when it would arrive.
One lady, who lived locally, had told me that the hotel by the station wasn’t at all bad, so as I had nothing to do I took the precaution of seeing if they had any rooms. A pleasant fraulein told me they had a few at €80 including breakfast.
So about ten, I put myself out of my misery and booked into the Advena Hotel Hohenzollern.
Advena Hotel Hohenzollern
It was a decision I didn’t regret.
I thought that I might regret going to McDonalds for a bite to eat, but the fries and Coke had no effect. The trouble was that the information on the back of the paper on the tray is unreadable because it’s so small. So I assumed that they were as in the UK, and gluten-free! I did think though, that McDonalds were showing some very unsuitable adverts for their target clientèle.
On the other hand, breakfast in the hotel of fish, scrambled eggs, juice and coffee was excellent.
I would certainly use this hotel or one of the other, Advena hotels again. Also as a lot of the trains seem to go through Osnabruck, this hotel is a convenient place to break a journey.
Unwelcoming Copenhagen!
My stay in Copenhagen was not the best.
I arrived in the city at six in the evening, to find the tourist office closed and all the hotels full. I eventually got a room in a rather poor hotel at a five star price. The Danes may be nice people, but some of them know how to rip off tourists.
The room was a fifteen minute walk from the station, so I decided to go there, get some food and then book my onward travel to Hamburg for the morning. I did have the train times, but I only had my tablet and felt that at the station there would be some of the excellent German ticket machines.
In the end, I got an excellent gluten-free meal at an Italian restaurant by the station, but by the time, I’d finished it was eight and the station was shut. There were no automatic machines, that sold tickets to Hamburg either. Customer Service? Forget it!
So I went back to my grotty hotel room and went to bed. There wasn’t even any reliable wi-fi, and there was nothing I could understand on the television. In fact, I doubt that even a Dane could have understood it, as both the sound and the picture was excrutiating.
Would I Go Back To Stockholm?
Most certainly! Yes! Although, I wouldn’t stay in the Stureplan Hotel again!
I’d probably try to get in Hotel Rival. It looks like I can get a room at a reasonable price for a couple of weeks ahead.
The hotel also knows its gluten-free, as it appeared did most of Stockholm.
Perhaps next time I go, it’ll be a stop-over on the way to see the bears!
Everybody needs to go to Stockholm once, just to see the Vasa.
The Anonymous Widower 