ETAP hotels…

This trip, however, was going to be a little different.  On the earlier trip, we had camped out and I had found that with what I had to carry for myself that I would not be able to carry additional camping gear for a passenger.  This meant that when my friend Ray joined me from the states we would have to use hotels for our lodging.  I wanted to trial the ETAP hotels as they appeared in a lot of locations I wanted to travel too, were relatively cheap at around 48 euro a night and the general room was built for 2 to 3 people. 

Typical ETAP Hotel outside...

I went ahead and paid extra for the morning breakfast ($4.95 euro) which was quite sufficient with toast, jam, milk, juice, yogurt, coffee, cereal and an assortment of breads.  This was good enough to get us off on a good start and cheaper and easier than if we had stopped someplace later. 

The hotel itself was very clean and had a high-quality control standard that I recognized in all the details of the hotel itself.  Clean reception area, clean breakfast area and clean rooms were the norm.

The rooms themselves were quite small.  Here is Roy after we just arrived still in his moto gear.

More on the order of a dorm room for a university.  The bed arrangement always included an upper bunk bed.  The bed below was either two singles side-by-side or a double.  There was one window, a small desk area and one basic chair.  There was a good TV with lots of channels and a hookup for a media player.  Also, there was a shower and toilette available in the room as built-in modules.  All in all, while we could have spent three times the money and gotten a larger room at another hotel, the end result would have been the same. i.e., a comfortable nights sleep.  As Roy and I were to share hotel costs, this would provide us on our trips with a hotel room and breakfast for about 25 euro a night.  Well within our budget.  We were very satisfied with the room though it would not suit a lot of people we knew because of the austerity and size.