Venice: Hotel on the pesce!

In order to break up the several food posts ahead, I thought I'd introduce our Venice hotel to you! I showed pictures of all of the other hotels we had booked, but due to last minute trip stuff, I never got around to showing pictures of the Venice hotel. So now you get the actual pictures that I took!

We stayed at Al Doge Beato, which is located on the actual island of Venice. After watching the Rick Steves Venice episode, we quickly decided that there was no way we'd be staying on the mainland. With that in mind, we started searching for hotels that fit our budget.

This was actually the first hotel we booked. I don't remember how we found it, or how we decided on it so quickly. Ok, that's kind of a lie....I know we found it on trip advisor. The ratings were good, the rooms looked spacious (which seemed uncommon for Europe), and there was a small canal near by.

Besides a little trouble we had checking in and some issues with something left behind (more about these in a later post), we had a great stay here! I think I'd give it 4/5 stars (4 out of 5, not to be confused with 4/5 of a star) for a European hotel! We went not expecting much, but we were pleasantly surprised =)

So now some pictures of our Venetian hotel:

The hairdryer! I just thought it was weird-looking...

View from our balcony, to the left (at night there are tables set out for the restaurant below). Oh, and our canal view

View from our balcony, to the right

Another view of our room....taken from the bathroom

And that is it! Our Venice hotel!! I think we got a pretty good idea of what to expect after looking at Trip Advisor. Oh, and I definitely plan on writing a review for every place we stayed, and everywhere we ate. The reviews we read and pictures we saw while we were booking were extremely helpful! So I urge you to do the same =)

Ok, get ready for a few more food posts!

Cinque Terre!

Yay! I'm super excited to stay in Cinque Terre...it should be a lot different than the other places we're staying....less modern. It will be nice to get away and relax, so I can't wait!

Anyway, there weren't too many different "hotels" in Cinque Terre, especially when we were able to narrow it down to one town in particular: Vernazza. It's the one Rick Steves recommends, so obvi we're staying there! After looking through the reviews on trip advisor, we ended up choosing one hotel, and requested a sea view room (you had to email or fax them to make reservations....). We were super disappointed to find out that it was no longer available, but they did have a non sea view room, with a private bathroom, for 20 euros less. So, this became our back up plan.

I kind of want to show pictures of the other hotels we looked at, and put in a request for, but that might have to wait for another post. To make a long story short, none of the other hotels we liked had rooms available, so we ended up back at the first place! At first I was kind of sad, but we did like it best in the first place, so there must be something good about it. And there is!

I'll show you pictures, all from trip advisor.

This will probably end up being our view....

This is what our view could have been!

Here's a picture of one of the nicer-looking rooms

And here's a picture of the connected restaurant!

I am definitely very excited to try out the restaurant that is part of the hotel: Gianni Franzi. The pesto and seafood and wine are all going to be so good (I'll be sure to take pictures, and post them when I get back.....to make you all jealous!). Anyway, while the nearby restaurant is exciting, my favorite part about the hotel has got to be the terrace, that everyone staying there has access to:

See the little part sticking out from the rock?

And here's a close-up view! The water is beautiful!