Hotel ibis Annecy Centre Vieille Ville (Annecy, FRANCE)

After a remarkable lunch at the iconic La Maison Troisgros in Roanne, we drove east towards the French Alps before settling down at the town centre of Annecy. Hotel ibis Annecy Centre Vieille Ville provides the accommodation for us tonight and it's located in the heart of all the action. Situated in Vieille Ville, the historic town centre of Annecy, the hotel is also on top of the public parking lot making it much easier for us to maneuver our baggages.

After dropping nearly 700Euros on our lunch today, tonight we're spending 10% of that budget on our hotel. Jelloman always joked about my willingness to spend on fancy food but yet not having the same generosity on lodging. Well, story of my life!

It's been a while since I last stayed at an Ibis but this looked even smaller than what I came to expect from an Ibis.

The bathroom looked dated but at least relatively clean.

The small window actually led to a balcony that overlooked the neighboring area.

A very peaceful area with mostly low-rise and nothing more.

One of the nicest things about staying at Ibis was the proximity to everything in the neighborhood, from the Old Town to the patisserie and cafes.

Annecy has everything you expect from a French old town, the charisma, a picturesque lake, buzzing cafes and restaurants.

It's almost impossible to find a table for dinner along the canals. Good thing we had a very BIG lunch this afternoon so we are just going to enjoy the scenery first!

Rating: ❤

Price: €

Address: Ilôt De La Manufacture, 12 Rue de la Gare, 74000 Annecy, France

Tel: +33 (0)4 5045-4321

Website: https://all.accor.com/hotel/0538/index.en.shtml

MO.OM Hotel (Olgiate Olona, ITALY)

We decided to take our chances by keeping our options open until the last day to decide where to stay in Milan. My hope was to stay somewhere in the heart of the city where we could still explore the fashion capital of the world but a late start at lunch ruined any chance of us having a stroll in Milan.

The change of plan had me scrambling for a place to stay for the night. So, when I finally found a special offer from MO.OM Hotel Olgiate Olona, I was immediately jumping for joy. 

Located just 15 km from Milan Malpensa Airport (where we will be embarking on our flight home the next morning), MO.OM Hotel is 4-star designer hotel with free WiFi and in-room entertainment.

For a little under €100 per night, it sounded too good to be true.

This turns out to be a much bigger hotel than a typical airport hotel, with facilities like swimming pool, fitness centre and bar. A clay tennis court and golf course with driving range are also available through a partner property nearby!

The property itself was a little dark but we could definitely appreciate the modern chic design.

The hotel was so big that we needed to drive our car to the other side of the complex just to get to our room. At this point, we still haven't got the bad news.

Our room was a sleek one with an all-white color tone.

The beds were standard singles but somehow they felt much smaller than a single. And the mattress was making my back hurt!

Right behind this wall was the bathroom.

Pretty adequate size and total spotless.

The shower room didn't have a door so there was a minor flooding incident when I took the shower.

Everything was looking great for a room under 100 bucks (except the mattress) until we found out about the central air conditioning system which has broken down for about a day. We weren't notified at the time of check-in so we got all puzzled when there was no cold air coming out of the vent. By the time we found that out, it was already too late.

After a few hours, our hotel was already hotter than a sauna, so I tried to go down to the reception counter asking for a room change but they said every single room at the premise has been without AC. 

Jelloman decided to open the windows for some fresh air while we were sleeping. But since the hotel is just off the A8 motorway (could see cars racing by from our window), it was like sitting at a Formula 1 race track.

Breakfast was included so we made sure that we stuffed ourselves before going to Malpensa Airport.

The hotel's breakfast restaurant is actually facing the same direction as our room (towards A8) but there was no noise with all the windows closed.

I was pretty disappointed with our stay, particularly with how the staff handled the air conditioning failure. They should have voiced it out when we checked in; at least we had the choice to leave for another hotel.

Rating: ❤

Price: €€

Address: Via San Francesco d'Assisi 15, 21057 Olgiate Olona, Italy

Tel: +39 0331 327551

Website: www.moomhotel.com/en/milan-more/hotel-malpensa/

Buyuk Anadolu (Ankara, TURKEY)

After spending 10 days in Turkey, I was still puzzled with their hotel ranking system. So does 5 star really mean the best or the worst?

This night, we arrived at yet another 5 starred hotel, Buyuk Anadolu. The exterior looked decent but definitely not 5 star material. Maybe 3 star at best.



The hotel was huge like a shopping mall or commercial building so they even had security guards there to patrol the premise.



It was not short on facilities, that's for sure. There were things like internet room (with pentium computers), table tennis room, snooker room and chess room. Not bad.



When we finally had time to check out our hotel room, we were hugely disappointed.



How could parts of the toilets still look unfinished? For instance, the sink still had rough edges which were not smoothed out and the bathtub was leaky. The balcony door also failed to lock properly which got us worried the whole night. Good thing that, we were leaving the hotel at 5am the next morning so our stay would be a very brief one.



I thought our friends summed this up pretty nicely, "It's like someone has come to build a huge hotel here with all the facilities and left when it's unfinished. And NO ONE bothered to give it some proper maintenance. After a while, it looks like this.". Well said.


Rating: ❤
Price: €€
Address: Büğdüz Mahallesi, Anadolu Otel İç Yolu, 06750 Akyurt/Ankara, Turkey
Tel: +90 312 841-6464

Mercure Budapest Buda (Budapest, HUNGARY)

We arrived at Budapest from Slovakia rather late last night and other than the meal at a local McDonald's, we didn't have much to eat. But we did crash early in order to wake up right around dawn. Our accommodation in Budapest was a place called Mercure Budapest Buda in the "Castle Hill" area.

Honestly, I didn't remember much about my room other than the fact that the light was really dim. Another area of improvement came from the bed, or more specifically the mattress. It was so thin that it made my back hurt the next morning.

But of course, there was a reason why we were staying here in the first place. 

The hotel was just a 5-minute ride to Halászbástya, or Fisherman's Bastion, a 19th century fortified castle up on the hill.

The lookout towers, and there were a few of them, provided stunning panoramic view of Budapest and Danube River from different angles.

This was really well worth the early morning call.



Built in 1982, the entire Mercure Budapest establishment Buda badly needed a facelift and they finally got it in 2019.

Rating: ❤

Price: €€

Address: Budapest, Krisztina krt. 41-43, 1013 Hungary

Tel: +36 1 488-8100