How a Hotel Ruined Athens

I’m at least a little demanding when I travel. I’ll admit that.

For example, when I go to a restaurant and order a ribeye, I do not like when they come back with a hamburger.

Likewise, when I reserve a room at a hotel, I expect them to put me in the agreed upon room, preferably with some resemblance to the photos on the website.

I understand that sometimes there are hurdles on the road. Our airplane was running late, putting us into Athens with just enough time to catch the last Metro into the city. We were later than expected, but it was not a big deal. 

We felt pretty confident in our planning. We had booked the Attalos Hotel more than a month earlier, and reviews on both Booking.com and TripAdvisor.com were outstanding. The photos showed a variety of rooms, so we requested one with a double bed and a single bed since there are three of us traveling now.

Attalos Hotel responded when we sent an email to let them know we would be arriving late, and they said it was not a problem, adding helpful directions via Metro, bus and taxi. We were delighted.

But when we arrived at 1 a.m., we went upstairs and found a dingy room that was just big enough for the three twin beds they had crammed in.

Now, I understand that rooms in Europe are generally smaller than those in the U.S., but this one was a fire hazard. And that was before we added our luggage.

We went back downstairs to ask for the correct room. The man at reception was nice enough, but he shrugged his shoulders and said that was the only room available.

After we showed him the photos from Booking.com, none of which looked anything like the room we had been given, he shrugged again.

He said he couldn’t do anything, but we were welcome to bring it up to the manager the next morning. Not exactly the customer service that so many people talked about in their reviews.

We were questioning whether our luggage would actually fit anywhere other than on the beds with us, and we explained again that what we booked was not what we were given.

He shrugged again and repeated that he had no rooms available. He said there was nothing he could do.

Knowing this was going nowhere and that he had no power to fix the problem, we suggested he call someone who could take care of the problem. He looked incredulous. In fact, he looked frightened.

I have had my share of problems at hotels over the years and throughout the world. Almost without question, the problem was fixed quickly, either by changing my room or booking me in a comparable hotel and covering the difference of the rate if it was higher than I originally booked. A hotel in Cusco, Peru even paid for our night’s stay in a different hotel after realizing that they had mistakenly given away our confirmed room.

This idea of booking us into another hotel seemed completely foreign to the receptionist. We are in Greece, so it probably was.

However, if he couldn’t fix the problem, we needed someone who could.

It took some coaxing, but he finally managed to find someone he said was the owner.

They spoke to each other in Greek, as the receptionist explained the situation. Then he handed me the phone.

The “owner” said there was nothing he could do. I again pointed out that the photos and description on Booking.com did not remotely represent what was in the room they had given us.

During at least one point, I may have raised my voice a little when I suggested that the “owner” was completely and totally interrupting me.

It was not a pleasant conversation.

Finally, he said that we had two choices: either we could take the room we were given, or the receptionist could help us book a room nearby. But he made a point of saying that we would be paying the price of the new hotel, regardless of how much it cost.

It was late, and I was tired. This clearly was not going to work out, so I handed the phone back to the receptionist, ready to take our chances on somewhere eles.

They spoke a little longer and hung up.

That’s when the receptionist told me what the owner had said: “He said he promised you that if you stayed in the room we have tonight, we can give you a good room tomorrow.”

It wasn’t ideal – and it wasn’t what he told me – but it sounded like a decent compromise.

We went to the room, and I stacked some furniture in the closet to make enough room for our bags.

I am not exaggerating.

As we were leaving the next morning, the daytime receptionist said that they would move our bags to the new room as soon as it was ready, and we could just pick up a new key when we finished our tour of Athens.

When we got back, she handed us the key and told us that the “manager” had requested to see us.

Figuring it was an olive branch, we headed up there. He said, “Is your new room all right?”

I said that we had not been up there yet, so he asked us to return after we had seen it.

We went up and found a suite with two small rooms. One had a double bed, and the other had two twins. There was also a balcony (which was almost as big as the first room we had been given) that had a lovely view of the Pantheon in the distance.

It seemed that the Hotel Attalos had more than made up for the issues the night before, and I headed down to the “manager’s” office to thank him.

He quickly cleared off one of the chairs across his desk and motioned for me to sit.

That’s when I started sensing that this was not going the way I anticipated.

“Last night, you were very unpolite (sic) to me and unpolite (sic) to my receptionist,” he said. “I don’t need to stand for being treated that way.”

Seriously? This wasn’t a mea culpa. This was a trip to the principal’s office. It also struck me as strange that the “owner” I had spoken to the night before was now the “manager.” Either way, I certainly did not like his tone.

At this point, I was fired up. I repeated that it was the hotel that gave us a different room than we had booked. A woman at a nearby desk began chirping at us, too.

Now, it was me who must have looked incredulous. What seemed to be an acceptable solution had plummeted into the most unpleasant hotel experience I have ever had.

As I was asking again about their blatant misrepresentation on Booking.com, which appears to be their primary source of their bookings, the woman chirping nearby continually interrupted me, just as the “owner/manager” had the night before. I again may have raised my voice slightly, when I requested that she not interrupt me.

Of course, my favorite moment came when the “owner/manager” claimed that they did not have rooms such as the ones pictured on the website. I’m not sure if he knew what he was saying or not, but it did make me pause.

In the end, our friend Karyn looked at the hotel employees and/or owners and asked, “What good did it do for you to call us in here? You seemed to have appeased the situation, and now you’ve made it much, much worse. I, for one, am tired of standing here while you waste even more of our time in Athens than you already have.”

With that, Karyn left. She made a great point, so both Fran and I followed.

It’s really too bad. Everyone we met in Athens – aside from those at the Hotel Attalos – were kind, inviting and enjoyable to be around.

But because of the sour taste left from dealing with the people at Hotel Attalos, we decided to cut our time there short.

Instead we opted to add an extra day on the coast in Nafplio. I spoke with the owner of the hotel there, and she was happy to have us early. She even offered to upgrade our room (it already had more beds than we needed) since we were staying longer.

I’m really looking forward to staying there.

Taking Our Time in Tuscany

The heart of the Chianti region.

We have seen a lot of wonderful European cities on this leg of the Funemployment Tour, ranging from London to St. Petersburg and Stockholm to Athens.

Each one has an energy and a beauty unique to itself. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of things to do and sites to visit in each one.

Each one is exciting. And each one is exhausting.

So when we pulled into Tavarnelle Val di Pesa in the Tuscany region of Italy, we were delighted by the lack of size and the lack of bustle.

It was exactly what we needed.

This isn’t to say that the town lacked things to do. It mostly lacked the seas of tourists that we had been wading our way through for the previous few weeks.

We arrived on a Tuesday for no other reason than it fit our schedule. Luckily for us, that was the evening each week that the town square turns into a lively marketplace.

Almost every town in Tuscany
looked like this in some way.

Bars and restaurants opened to the square, moving tables and chairs outside.

As I mentioned in a previous blog, there was a restaurant grilling steaks on the courtyard outside, and it smelled amazing.

The waiter escorted me next door to the butcher shop, where I received a two-inch steak cut in front of me. I took it back to the man at the grill, where he seasoned it with only olive oil and sea salt before throwing it over the coals.

It tasted as amazing as it smelled. With all due respect to the steaks in places like Kansas and Argentina (I have had outstanding steaks in both places), this was the best I’ve ever tasted.

We were surrounded at the restaurant – and around the town all together – by locals and people who had driven in from neighboring towns.

It was lively but also intimate and welcoming.

For five days, we started our mornings off with a run and a trip down to the town’s coffee shop/bar for some breakfast and caffeine, and then we headed out each day on excursions.

There were medieval towns and vineyards everywhere, and each one had its own uniqueness that made it different and interesting.

Sunset from near where we stayed in Tavarnelle.

Most of the towns were swarming with tourists, and that was fine.

Because at the end of each day we returned to our little hamlet in Tavarnelle, where we dined on fresh pasta and opened the wonderful bottles of wine that had discovered that day.

Overall, it was peaceful and fairly perfect.

It was just what we needed out of Tuscany.

How to Eat Your Way Through Italy

I knew we had made the right decision fairly quickly.

It’s not often that I have turned down the “meat” portion of a meal, but by this point the clothes around my midsection were already feeling a lot tighter than just an hour earlier.

And I knew we weren’t finished yet.

Even when we were in Ecuador, I could not help but look ahead to our travels to Italy. Granted, it was generally when I was eating a mediocre piece of chicken with flavorless rice.

I knew that Italy was going to be almost entirely about two things: food and wine.

Sometimes, you call this lunch, especially in Bologna.

We arrived in Bologna, a city known by some as the birthplace of Kappa Sigma and by most others as a wonderful place to fill yourself to nearly comatose.

Bologna is a beautiful medieval town, paved with cobblestone streets and shadowed by the same towers that have stood for hundreds of years.

Our plan was to see the sites while occasionally stopping for a glass of wine. And with each glass, we also were given some crackers or cheeses or cured meats. It’s possible that you could live in Italy for years without ever needing lunch.

So by 8 p.m., when our dinner reservations finally rolled around, I kind of felt like I was getting called up to the Major Leagues.

Fran and our friend Karyn, who joined us in Bologna, had been here before and talked endlessly about a restaurant they’d been to.

Osteria Broccaindosso had a lot to live up to, so we were a little disappointed to see it fairly empty upon our arrival. They handed us menus, and we weren’t quite sure what we wanted to do.

That’s when Karyn, who speaks at least a little Italian – much more than Fran or I do – told the server that we would prefer that they just start bringing us food.

It was something they knew how to do, and they did it well.

Before long, appetizers started appearing one at a time. There was salad, tomato with mozzarella, sausage with white beans, and squash flan.

The staff cleared our table and then quickly started delivering, among other things, tagliatelle with ragu, ricotta tortalini with butter and sage, and dry passatelli with zucchini.

It may go without saying, but there was far too much of each dish.

I was resettling myself in my chair, hoping some of the food would reposition and therefore open more space for more food.

That’s when the head server offered us the meat dishes.

Without a doubt, Fran saw the desperation in my eyes. I had been hearing legends about the desserts at this place. I knew it was either meat or sweets.

We hesitated, but in the end we opted to sprint straight to the finish.

Fran and Karyn (pictured) grabbed
a small share of each dessert.
I ate the rest.

Chocolate mousse was first, followed by a crème brulee. These were no individual portions. It was family style, and we were invited to take as much as we wanted.

A few minutes later, the servers pushed a nearby table up to ours. We had run out of space, and they still had more to deliver. There was apple pie, brownies with vanilla custard, chocolate cookies, and some sort of berry custard creation. There’s a very real possibility that I am missing at least 1-2 other desserts.

When we had been on a cruise through the Baltics a few weeks earlier, my entire family joked about ordering multiple desserts in the main dining room and then heading up to the buffet to get dessert. We thought we had reached some sort of new low – or high, depending on how you look at it.

In Bologna, I’m pretty sure we reached a new level.

Somehow I walked back to where we were staying, somewhat convinced I would never have to eat again.

That of course ended the following day, when we arrived in Tavarnelle and found a restaurant cooking up T-bone steaks on a grill in the town square.

It's amazing how easy charades becomes
when you are telling a butcher how big
you want your steak cut.

The waiter sent me next door to the butcher, who carved off a chunk that was at least two inches thick.

I’m pretty sure I will not go hungry on this leg of the trip.

From the London Underground

This blog has been quiet for a while now. Too quiet.

South America just inspired writing. In the past six weeks or so, we have road tripped to the Eastern U.S., gone on a cruise through the Baltics, and spent time in both Amsterdam and London.

All of that was perfectly lovely. But nothing strange really happened. And this blog lends itself to the abnormal.

I actually wrote a few blogs during that stretch, but none felt worthy of being published, and therefore I decided to kill them.

Things got more interesting when we left London on our way to Bologna, Italy.

It should have been an easy trip, really. There are direct flights from Heathrow to Bologna.

Of course, we chose a different route.

We left our friends’ flat (they were kind enough to let us stay with them in London) on Sunday morning. There was a train directly to King’s Cross, only three stops away, where we could switch from the Tube to the train system.

The Tube was waiting when we arrived, so we ran to jump on. It didn’t matter. We sat on an unmoving train for about 10 minutes before we left. At the next station, we did the same.

A stop shy of King’s Cross, we sat for 10 minutes before the conductor mumbled something into the PA system. It was completely incomprehensible. Finally, there was another announcement from someone who spoke clearly. The train was postponed indefinitely. We would have to change trains, go to another station, and switch trains again before finally getting to King’s Cross.

To be clear, switching trains on the London Tube system is not exactly simple. It involves exiting a train, running to a staircase, picking up our heavy bags, carrying them up, running more, picking up our bags again, carrying them downstairs, and running to a new platform. When the train arrived, we hoisted our bags on board and crammed into a train car that already held too many people. At new stations, repeat the process.

Three trains later, we arrived at King’s Cross, where we ran with our baggage hoping to make an early enough train. Throughout the station, there were delicious-looking pastries and plenty of coffee, just tempting us (especially me). We ran past, barely catching a good glimpse of what was just slightly out of reach.

Once we got to the train platform, we realized that the London train system card (the Oyster) worked for the train we were getting on, but not good as far as we were going, which was Luton Airport.

So I ran back upstairs, checked both of us out of the Oyster card and jumped in line for tickets. The line was not long, but the people just in front of me looked like they had never seen electronics prior to stepping up to the machine. They stared, then they stared more. I think they were hoping the ticket machine would correctly guess what they wanted and then pay itself. That didn’t happen.

Finally, I paid for two tickets and made it back to the platform just as the train was approaching.

We rode for about 40 minutes. The train system has made getting from London to Luton much easier than it was in the past. However, it’s still not a straight shot. The station is actually “Luton Airport Transfer,” where everyone one disembarks, picks up their suitcases, runs up a flight of stairs, crosses a bridge, goes down what seemed like 14 different escalators, and then jumps on an overstuffed bus that takes you 10 minutes to the airport.

Inside the airport, we waited in a long line for Easy Jet that more than rivaled most Southwest Airlines’ lines I have been in. After checking in, they sent us over to the customer relations desk. It seemed that we were among the few non-European Union members flying, so they had to double-check our passports.

At the desk, a man glanced quickly at our tickets and then our passports. He then scribbled something completely illegible on our tickets and sent us on our way. It seemed like the perfect way to ensure safety and compliance with visas.

Luton Airport is tiny and pretty strange, but it was also very easy. After security, there were machines where you could rate your experience using a variety of smiley and unsmiley faces. They were also at the airport restaurants. And the airport restrooms. Yes, I’m serious.

The flight to Pisa was simple. We chose it because it was quite a bit cheaper than flying directly to Bologna (when you’re unemployed, that is an especially important factor) and because we could rent a car there and return it to Rome nine days later.

FREE ADVISE THAT YOU DID NOT ASK FOR: If you ever find yourself flying within Europe, I highly recommend using small airports. Clearing customs at a place like London Heathrow, Paris or Frankfurt can be a nightmare. But clearing customs at London City or Pisa, if you have anything other than an EU passport, takes about 10 minutes.

We moved to the line for the rental car shuttle bus. It was almost endless. Fran looked at the sign, and mustering at least a little comprehension of Italian, she realized that the bus came once ever 15 minutes and that the rental car center was 400 meters away. Needless to say, we hoofed it.

The drive to Bologna took about two hours, maybe a little more because we stopped to see a certain leaning tower. Aside from congestion around Florence because of road construction, it wasn’t a bad drive.

However, after leaving at 8:15 a.m., we did not arrive at the flat we had arranged until 8:15 p.m. And it only took four trains, two buses, an airplane and around two miles of walking to do it.

There is no doubt that we earned the massive amounts of food that we were about to eat in Bologna.