It’s clear why this was (or is) called a Paris of the west, with the beautiful tin (?) cupolas and ornate ironwork on balconies. But it’s also gosh darn grimy and a little… disobedient feeling. There is SO much tagging (I think they could work on locking down spray cans a little more). Even on ornate stone buildings you see if not tagging, then spray painted stencils.
They seem very patriotic. There are red/yellow/blue tricolour flags everywhere! But there’s also a fair few EU flags too. And one brand of ATM offers both lei and euro withdrawals. Not that I’ve tested this out, as anz hasn’t allowed my card to withdraw cash here. So Rory’s paying if it requires cash!!
Interestingly here, when you ask for the bill, they routinely ask “cash or card”, cutting out a step in the bill paying dance (ask for bill, get bill, insert payment into folder, waiter checks and either takes the cash away or goes away to bring you the hand held device to pay). It’s ok, until Rory starts hearing things like “quiche or tart”. Admittedly we’d had two drinks a pop and Rory had been channeling a mermaid.
The whole hotel seems to have been built by a sparky or a lighting supply store! Our rooms desk is internally lit. The show head rotated through a range of colours. There’s light panel, thin and running verticals, in our room. The breakfast is clearly a strong stride to their high ranking on TripAdvisor (all three hotels so far have been top rated though all uniquely different). There’s countless bowls of nuts, seeds and dried fruits to make your own museli. There’s bowls of fruit, each bowl for a fruit, but I’d say 10 varieties? There’s freshly squeezed oj.
Wrote this awaiting to meet our Segway guide in a park. Then we went to an awesome bookstore and a super old place for lunch. And it’s now 10:30pm, no dinner and we’ve both napped. Tough life holidays!
Gorgeous book store! The breakfast sounds wonderful.
The bookstore was great – and I loved how engrossed my brother was in the small section of English books – warmed my heart!
Ohhhh…wow. (sorry I keep sounding like I’m gushing….) But that is the most beautiful bookstore.
I’ve been sitting here staring at the photos at the end of a long day and they are so calming. What a beautifully designed building.
Now that you brought it up…I can’t remember seeing any graffiti in Paris (though there was a lot of rubbish.) And in some older towns we visited like Besancon, there was graffiti but on newer elements like roller doors, not the old stonework. You would hope graffiti artists have some code of practice to preserve history!
The graffiti certainly marked the contrast to Russia – which was run down but not maliciously tagged and the like. I don’t mind the street art, which I see around inner city, but this was more the nasty, unartistic tags 🙁
You can gush all you like here! You’re most welcome at any time! It was a lovely bookstore, clearly lovingly restored an old building with wonderful modern interiors, perfectly.