Hotel Marconi

We stayed at the hotel Marconi for 3 nights during our trip to Milan in June 2003.

Location
We took the Malpensa Express from the airport Malpensa to the Stazione Centrale (the main railway station). Based on our guidebook the hotel was supposed to be located not far from the hotel. It is of course not always easy to navigate when you come to a new city so we did end up walking more than we needed to. The hotel is located on Via F. Filzi number 3 and the easiest way to get there is by walking down the main road from the central station towards Piazza della repubblica. The road Via F. Filzi is the road located parallel on the right hand side and it takes about 10 minutes to walk to the hotel.

The location of the hotel is OK. The main thing for us was that it was located near Repubblica Metro station and from there it was a short ride to the city center. It took us about 5 minutes to walk to the metro station and for 1 € you get a ticket to ride the metro for 75 minutes if I’m not mistaken.

There are a few restaurants in this area and there was also a couple of markets right across the street. There are some construction work going on outside front of the building.

Reservation
We made our reservation through http://www.italyhotelclub.com/ and when we got there everything was in order. We paid 75 € for the first 2 nights and 99 € for the last night and this was including the breakfast. The lobby included the front desk, a few chairs and a TV and there was also a bar that was open during the weekend. The hotel has about 70 rooms.

The room
The room had tiles on the floor and I have read that this is quite common in Italy and I guess it makes sense because it is easier to clean. We had a king size bed that was nice and soft (to my likings :-), a couple of chairs, a desk, a TV with quite a lot of Italian speaking channels and just a couple of English speaking channels (CNN and EuroSport), a wardrobe with about 5 hangers, a small minibar with some water, soda and alcohol. A door with windows provided the light and also gave us access to an open area in the middle of the building. The open space was not very pretty at the moment because there was some construction work going on.

The bathroom was also tiled and it had a toilet of course together with a bidé, a shower (with a shower curtain) and a sink. We also found a couple of shampoo bottles, some small bars of soap, and a hairdryer mounted on the wall. The shower was a bit small but the shower curtain did prevent flooding when we took a shower.

It was pretty quiet in the room and we didn’t hear anything from the traffic in the street in front of the hotel. But there is a church right next to the hotel and the bells keep ringing every half hour :-)

Breakfast
Breakfast was included and was served from 7 to 10 am. There was a selection of cereal, yogurt, buns, jam, honey, nutella, juice, fresh fruits and lots of sweet pastry stuff. We got tea or coffee together with the breakfast. It was not the most exciting breakfast but it is always good to get something to eat before you start walking around town.

Conclusion
The Marconi is an OK and there is not much more to say about the hotel. We didn’t spend much time in the room because we were out exploring the city all day long. The main thing for us was that the room was clean and that it was close to the metro so that we could get around.