Utente ospite
16 giugno 2023
This is an eccentric little hotel in Tel Aviv with interesting art work. We had a classic room, which was fine for the two of us. We had a nice bathroom, good air conditioning and a little balcony. The hotel is on Allenby Street, which is being dug up at the moment. We were at the back of the hotel, so not bothered by noise from the workmen, but it did mean that when we arrived, our taxi couldn’t drop us at the door. It’s a convenient location, near to the beach, so we could go for a swim in the Med every morning. It’s also near shops and markets, such as Carmel Market. There is no lift and we were on the second floor, so if you’re not able bodied, you might think twice before staying here. With high ceilings, that’s a lot of steps. Breakfast was good. I’m a coeliac, but they found me some gluten free bread. Eggs are gluten free naturally, so I could have scrambled eggs or omelette or shakshuka. The Israelis have salad with breakfast, but if you don’t want that, you can ask for ‘no salad’. There was a fridge in the room, so we could buy things from the supermarket to eat and drink for lunch and snacks. There was a kettle and Nespresso machine. The hotel kitchen closes at 5 pm, so we couldn’t have dinner there. The room included a ‘kitchenette’ so we considered cooking something for our own dinner to save the trouble of finding a restaurant safe for coeliacs. That proved impractical. There was a combined microwave and conventional oven, but no instructions and we couldn’t read the Hebrew on the buttons. There was also nothing to cook things in. We had plates and bowls, but no cooking dishes. We had spoons and knives, but bizarrely, no forks. The kitchenette also appeared to be directly under a smoke detector, so we were concerned about setting off the sprinkler system. In the end, we did not attempt to cook anything in the room. We went up to the roof garden a couple of times. You can sit in the sun or shade and watch the F16s. There was one confusion / misunderstanding. We booked our taxi from Ben Gurion airport to the hotel through the hotel. They charged a deposit or booking fee (?) of 50 NIS and we were told that the fare would be 330 NIS. That sounded expensive. We assumed that, as we had already paid 50 NIS, we would have to give the taxi driver 280 NIS, but he demanded 330, so we paid 380 NIS to get from the airport to the hotel, which is far too much. It’s only a half hour taxi ride. We discussed this with the hotel manager and he was helpful and apologized, saying something had gone wrong. To set this right, the hotel booked and paid for our taxi from the hotel back to Ben Gurion. The hotel has great potential to be really good. It’s an older building with interesting features. There’s just a few things that bring it down, such as the misunderstanding with the taxi fare and small things like a wobbly tap in the kitchenette sink. Also, Tel Aviv is quite gritty and that was made worse by the road works, so it would have been helpful
Traduci