How to Choose a Hotel - Our Booking.yeah Moments

Have you seen the new very hilarious, and very dorky ads from Booking.com? Have you ever had a reaction like that?

I definitely have had this feeling (and probably something very close to that reaction) for several hotels I have stayed in in recent years, which I'm quite proud about because too often a bad hotel stay can ruin your entire vacation, at least I know it can ruin mine. But i'm quite lucky with 5 weeks vacation a year, so going wrong once or twice isn't as dramatic as it would be for those who only have 2 weeks vacation a year and risk it all on one hotel.

Our method is simple, we choose our hotels based on review score and rarely book anything that has a score below 8, but the higher the better and anything above 9 is sure to be a great deal and make us giddy. Since learning to use Booking.com's reviews in this way we haven't gone wrong once for whatever it was we were looking for- from 5 star decadence to rest your head for the night budget and everything in between. We then cross check the hotel reviews with those on Tripadvisor, we have found that these generally tend to be in the same range.

The interesting thing is our budget has remained almost unchanged but the standard of hotels we stay in has shot up, on average we have spent around €89 per night, but we no longer let budget and price dictate the hotel we choose.

And the result? 

Choupana Hills Resort & Spa - Funchal, Madeira. Probably the best hotel I have ever stayed in, set up in the hills and surrounded by eucalyptus trees we were blown away with a private bungalow overlooking the sea, but what truly stood out was the impeccable service. (I also wrote a very comprehensive review on Tripadvisor).

Image used with the permission of Choupana Hills Resort & Spa

Lawrence's Hotel - Sintra, Portugal. Few things are better than being upgraded and upon check-in we were upgraded to a suite. To top it off the setting is magical and the service is very attentive, it is also home to an excellent restaurant. Lawrence's was so good that we decided to have our wedding and wedding weekend there!

Image used with the permission of Lawrences Hotel.

Mercador - Lisbon, Portugal. Jaw dropping decadence set in a gorgeous building that dates back the 16th-century with all the extra touches and luxuries, for such a high standard it was excellent value for money. Understandably one of the highest rated hotels we have ever stayed in.

Image by Ana Carvalho. Used with the permission of Mercador.

Riad Chbanate - Essaouira  Morocco. Imagine a super lux, exotic Moroccan riad, well Riad Chbanate is the reality. Not surprisingly it has also won a Tripadvisor Travelers Choice Award. The rooms have excellent attention to detail and lavish large bathtubs, the service is excellent.

Frogner House Apartments - Oslo, Norway. Super stylish and housed in a beautiful grand building, the location is in a nice area of the city making it unbelievably good value and and quality for Oslo, which we usually find painfully expensive and horribly depressing. 

Image used with the permission of Frogner House Apartments.

Monte Santa Catarina - Monsaraz, Portugal. A relaxing little country house with friendly staff who went out of their way help us with anything we needed and who had excellent recommendations and insights into the surrounding area.

Image used with the permission of Monte Santa Catarina.

Albergaria do Calvario - Evora, Portugal. A boutique hotel in a lovely setting, some of the best service we received in Portugal hotels, they also offered a delicious breakfast full of locally produced products. Inspired by our stay I wrote a blog post about it here.

Image used with the permission of Albergaria do Calvario.

Hotel Regina - Vienna, Austria. One of our biggest gamble's on choosing a hotel was when we decided to recommend a hotel to the family for Christmas, but the Hotel Regina did not disappoint, although the entire hotel was booked out they fulfilled our request to have the room with the piano. Christmas Eve and Christmas day had a perfect setting.

Image used with the permission of Hotel Regina.

Riad Thais - Essaouira, Morocco. My favorite Riad in all of Morocco, at just €50 per night. The entire riad was new and excellently designed and furnished, what really made it amazing though was the service, the owner went out of her way for us and even made me the most lavish breakfast imaginable when I told her I couldn't eat gluten.

Image used with the permission of Riad Thais.

Lisbon Story Guesthouse - Lisbon, Portugal. Unbeatable value at just €30 a night, clean and a cute vintage chic design, it was the perfect place for an overnighter in Lisbon.

Image used with the permission of Lisbon Story Guesthouse.

Vacation/weekend getaway bliss!

A (Quiet) Gem in Alentejo

When you live in one of Lisbon's pretty little seaside towns getting away from the crowds of locals and tourists is at times almost impossible, which is what made the little town of Évora roughly an hour away from Lisbon (or 2 hours by bus) in Alentejo such a little gem.

In Évora, keen to get some good quality, tranquil nature walking into our timetable my husband enthusiastically asks our hotel receptionist "where can we go for a hike around here?" the receptionist  looks at us like we're mad and suggests another town 40km away where we can see a charming little town on a hill and have a coffee in one of the several charming cafe's. I didn't get the impression that walking is a national pastime here, actually, a couple of weeks earlier we found locals asking us why on earth we would possibly want to walk from Cabo da Roca to Sintra when we could easily drive there... but the Sintra forest is one of the prettiest forests I've seen in Europe and walking through there is well worth skipping a car for a day. And as it happens walking in Évora is also worth skipping the car and driving to the next town for coffee. Just outside the town you can follow a path along a 9km ancient aqueduct - the Água de Prata Aqueduct or Aqueduct of Silver Water built between 1531 and 1537. The walk takes you through some beautiful countryside with stunning orange, yellow and red hues speckled with green cork trees and the occasional white farm house.

Images by Mats Stafseng Einarsen.

 

Looking back on Évora

 
Though you don't have to get into the countryside to enjoy peace and quiet because Évora itself lacked the crowds and had a tranquil quiet vibe all along it's charming narrow streets making it perfect for a quaint little weekend away.

Templo de Diana

 

Must eat: local food in the countryside always has a tendency to blow my mind and the regional porco preto surely didn't disappoint but an interesting (and tasty!) regional dish that is a must try is the Alentejo gazpacho, chopped tomato, cucumber and green pepper are immersed in iced water and olive oil and then sprinkled with oregano, it comes with a side of bread for dipping. It was like drinking a Greek salad, and it definitely went down easy in the scorching 35c degrees and even easier with a delicious glass of white wine also from the region.

Alentejo style gazpacho

Stay: Albergaria do Calvario a beautifully decorated boutique hotel with friendly staff, excellent service and a delicious breakfast offering the best local produce.

Milan In Less Than 3 Days

I'd never heard much about Milan but reading about heavy discounts on designer clothes, markets with vintage shoes and cheap flights from Amsterdam it felt natural to do a girls trip there. So last Friday Amanda and I jumped on a plane and headed toward Italy. 

Unfortunately heavy discounts meant that instead of paying €4999 for an Armani (or; Dior, Gucci, Prada etc etc) dress you could pay just €1699 for it, and that vintage second hand items started at over €100. So there I was, shocked to find almost* everything was out of my budget.

Ok, so I wasn't going to shop on this trip but that wasn't the end of the world because Milan had so much more to offer. 

Tea and cookies in Art Nouveau Heaven at Zucca in Galleria located in the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II just opposite the Doumo, completely over priced at €4.80 for a cappuccino but the cookies are to die for and in combination with the setting the tea and cookie option at €6 is totally worth it. 

Inside the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele ll

A quick hop over the Piazza Doumo to the Museo del Novecento (the Museum of the 20th Century) is well worth a visit, on display is contemporary Italian art and it hosts several works of Umberto Boccioni and surprisingly some work by Pablo Picasso. Entrance until the end of February 2011 is free. 

Happy Hour in Navigli happy hour in Milan is unlike anywhere else I have seen, between about 6-10pm bars offer their take on the Italian aperitif (a glass of prosecco and some bar snacks before dinner) in the form of an all you can eat buffet with any drink/cocktail purchase (usually between €6-12), the buffet includes warm and cold snacks such as pizza, pasta, cured meats, cheeses, grilled and cured vegetables, salads, desserts… the list goes on and on and by the time you're done you're too stuffed for dinner anyway. The district of Navigli is a great area for Happy Hour, here canals are lined with some great bars and restaurants that all compete against each other when happy hour roles around, lavish buffets are on display in their windows. Guides will often advise you not to over indulge and state that treating the buffet's as a dinner is considered tasteless by the locals, however this does not seem to bother the locals we encountered who piled on the goodies and went for 3rd and 4th rounds themselves.

Happy hour!

Stroll through Navigli back to Milans canal district Navigli during the day is also worth a visit, filled with art studios and galleries, vintage clothing and antique stores, well stocked book shops, outdoor markets and cozy cafe's it is a great place to take a walk, pick up a bargain and enjoy a coffee and croissant.

Gorgeous bag found in a second hand vintage shop and still completely out of my budget

Breakfast in Navigli

Climb the Doumo Milan's Doumo is an incredible cathedral made of marble, the Doumo is exceptionally detailed with 3,500 statues, sculptured stories told on it's brass doors by different artists and beautiful stained glass windows. The inside is so special that even an atheist like myself can marvel at what man's faith is capable of creating, but to really appreciate it's grandness pay €5 and climb to the roof (or €8 for the lift), the detail on the 135 spires is stunning when viewed from the top.

The Doumo, view from the top and sculptures on the doors. 

On the top of the Doumo

Sample delicious handmade Mozzarella after climbing the Doumo treat yourself with a sundowner at Obika Mozzarella Bar. Located on the top of a lavish several story department store the restaurant has a gorgeous view of the Doumo spires and the sunset viewed here while enjoying a bottle of cool white wine was the highlight of my trip. Oh and the food is damn good too, Obika has a completely new restaurant concept and offers different types of mozzarella accompanied by delicious and fresh traditional Italian sides, yum!

Get cultured the Biblioteca Ambrosiana (WOW) is another of Milan's highlights, the library also houses a the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana (the Ambrosian Art Gallery) which displays some fantastic masterpieces including Raffael's "School of Athens" and works by Botticelli and Leonardo. The library section is also impressive with 30,000 manuscripts. My only wish is that we had more time so that I could really explore it, we did however see what we went to see and it was totally worth it, the current exhibit of Leonardo Da Vinci's The Codex Atlanticus, these sketches were mind boggling and seeing Leornardo doodles on the edges of the paper used for his designs was a great sight! We were lucky enough to get free entry that Sunday but the usual €15 entry would be totally worth it!

The Castello Sforzesco is also a must see, the caste has several museums within it's walls including an archeological and prehistoric museum it also has a great art collection which includes Michaelangelo's last sculpture the The Rondanini Pietà. 

Ah Milan.

*almost everything, except for these babies at just €39.95 from OVS Industry

Köln Christmas Markets: part twee

There is something special about Christmas in Europe, having grown up in Sydney, the days leading up to Christmas' composed mostly of humidity, bikini's and fake snow from a can on windows. But in Europe you really feel Christmas is... Christmas. Hot mugs of glühwein, the smell of cinnamon in the air, people in big coats and gloves, pepperkaker, and ice skating rinks outside, outside!

So imagine how much I was bursting with excitement on the days leading up to our weekend in Köln a weekend dedicated to checking out Christmas markets! A concept I had only heard of a few months ago. After all the excitement I am happy to report back that I was not disappointed at all. The markets, the food, the smells, the sights, the goods were soooo good and so so Christmas'y.

Doughnut men with cherry hearts

Shot 10 seconds before we all gorged on chocolate covered fruits

Amandaliscious

Assorted spices

The Köln Christmas markets turned out to be an excellent way to start to the Christmas season. And on our return to Amsterdam all the Sinterklaas decorations had been replaced with Christmas ones, this weekend we will pick up a tree and before we know it we will be zooming over to Norway for another white Christmas. 

Köln Christmas Markets: part een

Last Saturday Mats and I jumped into a car with Amanda and Dave and drove to Köln. I was surprised to find that it was not a pretty city at all, being almost completely bombed during WW2 most of the cities architecture is from the 1950's so it lacked a lot of the old charm many other large European cities have. But what it did have were some amazing Christmas markets (have I mentioned markets are my favourite thing of all time?), excellent tastes and a pretty good vibe.

I'm sure my body still hasn't recovered from all the delicious beer and market food I stuffed into it - delicious egg nog, yummy (and probably glutenous) potato cakes with apple sauce, currywurst, chili mushroom stroganoff, jalapeno and mango shots, deep fried brie, chocolate coated mandarin pieces and probably many, many more things my brain has conveniently repressed.

Brussels Weekend Snap Shots

Last weekend we jumped on a train over to Brussels (something we have been meaning to do for a while now). From Amsterdam, Brussels was only 3hrs away and cost €44 for a return ticket. We treated ourselves (because of my new employment status) and stayed at the Grand Metropole which had some incredible French Renaissance mixed with Art Deco architecture. 


One of the things we noticed during our first stop in Brussels a few months ago was the amount of street art and murals all around the city, Belgium also has a big comic book culture and a lot of these characters can also be found painted around the city too. 

 

 

Inside the Comic Trip Center.

As well as waffles, chocolate and Beer, apparently Belgium is also famous for having fantastic moules mariniers - mussels cooked in a delicious broth of  white wine, butter and herbs and served with a side of fries. It seemed like they were all the rage too, restaurants were full of people eating them and we couldn't resist either. 

 

 

 

We strolled through a little antique market, I was hoping of finding some original Art Nouveau or Art Deco jewelry or home wares but instead I got the same feeling I often get at antique markets - that it's just people's old junk they no longer wanted :)

 

Before heading home we made sure to pick up some speciality Belgian beers and chocolate. Then we spent 3 hours standing up in an over booked train while first class carriages were empty. Apparently Benelux Weekend tickets don't even entitle you to a seat on the train. Thanks a lot NS Highspeed.