Hostelbookers Sparkling Summer Sale

Italy’s very own summer sales are great.  You can pick up all sorts of things at knock-down prices.  Hostelbookers, the website which specialises in budget accommodation is also holding a summer sale which includes a wide selection of interesting places to stay around Italy.  I know, they wrote to tell me about it.

Now, I’m spreading the word.  If you are thinking about a last minute break, or considering coming to Italy for a longer stay, you’ll find discounts of up to 50% in around 90 hostels and low cost hotels located all over Italy, from Arezzo to Assisi, Taormina to Trieste, Venice to Verona, and, of course, that eternal city, Rome.

Read on for details of interesting links where you will be able to learn more about summer savings.

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Rome’s Rip Off Passetto Restaurant?

Situated a mere stones-throw away from Rome’s famous Piazza Navona, a romantic meal for two Japanese tourists in the Passetto restaurant turned out to be such as costly experience that it probably left a bad taste in the two diners’ mouths.

The unlucky couple  must have nearly fallen over when they were presented with a credit card bill which totalled a whopping 579 Euros!  And that was not all, the crafty owner allegedly tacked on an extra 115 Euro tip!  Talk about adding insult to injury.  This brought the grand total to around 700 Euros.  Quite a pricey bite to eat!

Obviously believing that they had been royally ripped off by the suspected sharp practices of this Roman restaurateur, and after having tried to dispute the bill, the Japanese couples’ next stop was the local constabulary (two unlucky Japanese couples! – see update below).  The Roman police must have agreed that the price was rather on the steep side, and promptly brought charges against the owner for this probable con trick.

Not only has the owner of this pricey and apparently popular eatery been charged with fraud, but his establishment is also being investigated for hygiene regulation infringement, according to reports on the L’Unità and other Italian news websites. At present the Passetto Restaurant in Rome’s Via  Zanardelli is closed.

Want to know what the average Passetto restaurant price per head is?

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Italy by Car, a New Travel Guide

This post is about a new travel guide about touring Italy by car.  Many people who visit Italy will come by car, and to really discover all that Italy’s exceptionally beautiful and varied landscapes have to offer, a car is just about essential.

The Touring Club of Italy, better known as the Touring Club Italiano here in Italy, is a Milan-based non-profit organisation which was founded way back in 1894 by a group of 55 Italian cycling enthusiasts.  The TCI, as it is often known, publishes lots of interesting Italy travel guides, the most famous of which are the ‘Guide Rosse‘ or Red Guides, which are not related to Michelin’s similarly named series of Red Guides, by the way.  TCI guides are also available in English.

Well, the other day I found myself with half an hour to kill, so I popped in to an Italian Touring Club travel store in central Milan.  The shelves of this shop are jam packed with guides, videos, DVDs and a whole host of other travel related resources.  You can even buy Italian Touring Club bicycles, which is in keeping with the origins of this organisation, which now boasts some 400,000 members, incidentally.  Some of the Italian members of the TCI may well be cyclists, but the majority nowadays will not be, one suspects.

All this travel related goodness is not solely limited to Italy – Italians are quite adventurous world travellers in their own right – and guides to every corner of the world can be found.  Buried in amongst all this travel literature you may also find guides in English, as indeed, did I.

However, the guide which caught my eye was a new one all about discovering Italy by car. I stumped up the 20 Euro asking price, and thought I’d write a little about it, and then tell you the rub.

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