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A Casa di Paola B&B in Ravenna

I was really looking forward to my day in Ravenna, as I love mosaics, and was looking for a budget place to stay. I reserved a night at A Casa di Paola B&B because it was recommended in Rick's 2014 guidebook and the price looked right. I reserved by e-mail (which appears to get you a cheaper price vs. booking.com)--beware that their e-mails may get caught in your spam folder (as they did for me). They only take cash (and charged me the price quoted by e-mail), so no credit card number was needed to reserve (which really surprised me). We took the train from Venice to Ravenna, walked from the station to the B&B just using the map in Rick's guidebook, and arrived just before 2 pm. From the street, you would never know it was a fancy B&B inside. We were buzzed in. The friendly woman speaks limited English but got the major ideas across. She gave us the keys to room C (which had 2 beds as we requested). The room was so huge and fancy for 70 euros! WOW! I thought she'd given us the wrong room :) The room had a huge Ikea-style wardrobe, a couch, two chairs (which we called thrones), and a TV with good channels (which we used to watch the US unfortunately lose in the World Cup). A/C felt great on a warm summer day (got down to 72-74 F). Ensuite bathroom was very large and remodeled--felt very modern. Large glass shower. I tried and tried and could not get the included wifi to work--this was the only place on our trip where I couldn't get the wifi to work--but we used the shared guest computer in the morning. Lighting in the room was incredible compared to the dim lighting at most of our hotels. Room was smoke-smell-free, and I think the whole place was non-smoking (but I'm not sure--her non-smoking sign was only posted in the breakfast room). Room was clean. We were offered a free bottle of wine on arrival (but we don't drink, so we refused), and there is a level where there is a fridge with drinks (and maybe yogurt?) guests are welcome to enjoy as well as an all-day coffee machine. (We had cold water when we returned from sight-seeing--very nice.) Breakfast had the least choices of all the places we stayed on our trip, but it still had a selection of pastries, toast, cereal, yogurt, juice (pear juice!), and coffee, One of the two beds in the room (mine) was SO comfortable and soft--I slept so well--but the other one was firm. The street was not well-lit after dark, and we found the outer door very, very difficult to open. (I would LOVE to know what the trick was to easily opening it! We always got it open, but it always took 1-2 minutes of turning this way and that in no particular pattern.) We easily walked to all of the Ravenna mosaic sites. (We didn't brave the language barrier to try to use the loaner bikes we saw in the courtyard, but it would have been nice to go to Classe using them. Maybe next time!) The breakfast woman (owner?) already had a receipt ready for me, so check-out after breakfast was easy. I would love to know how this place compares with the other Rick-recommended lodgings in Ravenna, but I loved this place. If only all budget lodgings were this nice!

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