I have returned from a week in Italy, essentially seeing friends and family my Italian wife Francesca and I have not seen since before the pandemic.
We went to Trieste, Bologna and Ancona.
I try to maintain the Busman’s Holiday approach to travel and not look at every single hotel I happen to pass, but in Bologna we stayed at a hotel and in the other cities they were pointed out to me as being properties of some distinction.
In Trieste, a friend is very involved in one of the city’s two important rose gardens — the Parco di San Giovanni, which contains a good, little restaurant, Il Posto Delle Fragole, or The Place of the Strawberries.
Profits from much of what goes on in the restaurant, garden and other on-site amenities and projects help fund care for those with mental handicaps, and hospital facilities are on-site, too.
Tucked behind one wall, and not part of the garden, is the Villa Bottacin, which I was told is the best hotel here if you do not want to be in the heart of the city. At one time, Trieste was the most important port in Europe, the ingress and egress of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the city that was once the most important city in the insurance industry and where Irish novelist James Joyce once lived.
Villa Bottacin was built in 1854 and has a pool, 17 rooms, space to breath, wonderful views of Trieste below and the karst-limestone hills leading to Slovenia behind. It's one hotel for us to stay at in the future.
In Bologna — how beautiful is Bologna! — we stayed in a humble hotel called the Arcoveggio, which was recommended to us because it happened to be one of the closest to the friends we had come to see. The hotel is not one to grace the covers of magazines. It is basic but spotlessly clean, and we had a comfortable stay. And the hotel was full.
Its small front garden provided a respite from the June heat and was patrolled by long-tailed blue and knapweed fritillary butterflies, and if you have even one of those species in your hotel garden, your hotel scores points with me.
During a walk in Bologna, we paused at the funeral of Flavia Franzoni, a university professor at the city’s Faculty of Political Sciences and the wife of former prime minister and president of the European Commission Romano Prodi.
The family is a humble one, and indeed we were shown both their names posted on a small card by one of the doorbells of their condominium building yards from where the funeral service took place at the small church of the Basilica Santuario Santo Stefano.
It's difficult to think that ex-prime ministers and U.S. presidents would do the same, or be allowed to do so.
Back near our hotel, in the district of Bolognina, we ate at the also humble restaurant 2 Cuochi, which has gained much praise of late and where I indulged in two of my culinary loves, simple but excellent pasta sauces and fried zucchini flowers.
One hotel in Ancona I passed was the Hotel Ego, which might not be humble if its name is anything to go by. It is along the famed coast Ancona a little north of the city. Its name means “elbow“ in Greek — the Greeks were here centuries ago, and there still are places far to the south of Ancona, in the province of Puglia, where a Greek dialect is spoken.
I love the fact that the Ego Hotel brand is owned and operated by the Great Hotel Group.
It must constantly have a lot to live up to, which is perhaps the way the hotel industry should conduct itself.
What’s In a Name?
Ever wonder the correct pronunciation of the place in which I am writing this words, the CoStar/STR office in London’s Southwark district? It’s “Suff-urrck.”
Yes, it’s difficult for non-natives, and it is different to the pronunciation of the English county of Suffolk, but only to the native ear. That’s pronounced “Suff-thukk.”
I bring this up as I am delighted to read this year’s BBC recap of a new, wonderful tradition that started in 2021 and has very recently staged its third event, the now annual Nene/Nene Challenge.
The sport is croquet, the event is to decide how the river that flows through the two contestant clubs’ cities — Northampton in the county of Northamptonshire and Peterborough in Cambridgeshire — is to be pronounced for the next 12 months.
Is the River Nene going to be referred to as the “Nen” or the “Neen.”
The contest starts, I believe, with both sides agreeing to call it the “Nay-nay,” which as Polynesian hoteliers will know is a type of Hawaiian goose, which I have been lucky enough to see on the island of Kauai.
There is much at stake. Peterborough won this year, and last, but they lost the inaugural match.
So, “Neen” it is for the next 12 months.
If only all arguments could be settled in this way.
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