The Best Western Hotel Carlos V (Maestro Victoria 5, 28013 Madrid, SPAIN; phone [34] 91 531 4100 or visit www.hotelcarlosv.com) is located on a pedestrian street just a minute or two on foot from Puerta del Sol. It is convenient to popular tourist sites, restaurants, shopping and two metro stations.
Hotel Bonaparte (61 rue Bonaparte, 75006, Paris, FRANCE; phone +33 01 43 26 97 37, fax +33 01 46 33 57 67 or visit www.hotelbonaparte.fr) is in an excellent location, but I didn’t like the hotel and would not stay there again. My stay was in October ’06.
This 2-star hotel is two blocks from Place St. Germain heading north (toward the Seine) and one block from Place St. Sulpice heading south. There are Métro stops at both places.
We recommend Campanile Roissy (Zone d’Activites du Parc de Roissy, Allee des Vergers, 95700 Roissy en FRANCE; phone +33 1 34 29 80 40, fax 80 39 or e-mail roissy@campanile.fr) to anyone looking for a reasonably priced hotel near Charles de Gaulle International Airport.
I spent a delightful week at a lovely, small hotel in London, ENGLAND: the Blandford Hotel (80 Chiltern St., London W1U 5AF, U.K.; phone 44-207-486-3103, fax 487-2786 or visit www.blandfordhotel.com). I first stayed there in January ’05 and liked it then, but on my most recent visit in March ’07 I found that the entire hotel has been beautifully renovated from top to bottom.
I am a 55-year-old woman who does a lot of international traveling alone. The issue of where to keep my money and passport is always a problem. Although I am somewhat hesitant about the in-house safes, in so many countries where pickpocketing is a regular job, we almost have to use the hotel safes. I do two other things.
Murray Halbert’s tale of theft from his room safe at Angkor Wat (May ’07, pg. 41) resonated painfully with me, as something eerily similar happened while I was staying in a not-so-wonderful, smallish hotel in Bangkok in December ’06. I have made use of those in-room electronic safes on several occasions, a habit that I am determined to shed from now on.
A hotel room safe is no more secure than the management or any of the personnel is honest. In fact, it is something of a sitting duck — obvious and easy to open quickly, either with an override key or code.
On a trip to Morocco, Dec. 20, 2006-Jan. 4, 2007, I arrived in Casablanca with only a hotel reservation and some ideas but no firm plans. I had read articles about Morocco in ITN, checked the Internet and had referred to Lonely Planet and Footprint guidebooks as well as several fine pamphlets (“Imperial Cities,” “Museums,” “The Kasbah Trail,” “Casablanca,” etc., published by the Moroccan National Tourist Office (Orlando, FL; 407/264-0133, www.visitmorocco.org).
Tell ITN about the funniest thing that ever happened to you while traveling in a foreign country. There are no restrictions on length. (ITN prints no info on destinations in the U.S., Canada, Mexico or the Caribbean.) The ITN staff will choose each month’s winner, who will receive a free one-year subscription to ITN. Entries not chosen cannot be acknowledged.
This month’s winner is JOHN LUDEMANN of Palm Desert, California:
From Trier, GERMANY, April 21, 2007. . .