Yesterday, I reserved hotels for part of our vacation next year. And once again, some of them will be paid for with B's Starwood points.
I suspect that our Italian hotels will be dramatically different from our French hotels. Our hotels in Paris and Nice, while in excellent locations for tourists, were geared toward business travel. I expect our Starwood hotels in Italy to offer modern conveniences, such as hot showers (which can be hard to come by in that country), but their decor will be centuries old. Eighteenth-century opulence isn't B's and my preferred decorating style, but I think that feeling like we are staying in museums will make for a better Italian experience.
The photos that I've seen of our hotels in Venice and Florence are promising. Our hotel in Venice is right on the Grand Canal and minutes away from the Piazza San Marco. The hotel is affiliated with another hotel--just a boat ride away, of course, because everything is a boat ride away--that has a beach and even (don't tell B) golf. Our Florence hotel is a former palace. Perhaps we will be upgraded to a better room if I tell them that I am Queen of America.
Sandwiched between this lavishness is our as-yet-undetermined hotel in Cinque Terre. Because the Starwood chain doesn't have any hotels in the area, we will have to find the hotel on our own. Rick says that some hotels are reluctant to book too far in advance, so I have not yet begun an official hotel search. However, I have a few expectations. The room will be teeny and sparsely furnished. There might be a view of the ocean, but a terrace is unlikely. We might not have a drop of hot water the entire 4 nights that we are there. And we will have to pay for the entire stay ourselves--bummer.
The Cinque Terre hotel will prepare us for our windowless cave of a room on the cruise ship, another venture for which we are paying ourselves. Noticing a trend here? We choose the overstated opulence route when it's free but opt for spartan scantness when our own euros are on the line--except when it comes to shopping while on vacation, of course. You can't cut corners everywhere.
