We've been enjoying taking advantage of some very cheap budget flights recently and my girlfriend found us a couple of cheap seats to Venice (okay, Treviso, but it's only a bus ride away!)
Having never been to Venice and having no idea of where to stay I needed to find a cheap hotel and found this place on Hotels.com/Expedia for around £45 a night. That's a cheap price as far as I'm concerned so I went ahead and booked, using a voucher for the booking site brought the cost down to £40 a night, a price I was certainly happy with.
Hotel Background
The hotel was opened in late 2008 and is located in the area of Castello. The building is a former palace, dating from 1362, but you won't find a lot of ancient features. They like to point out that Casanova has stayed at the palace in the past. The name 'Bragadin' is from the man who ordered the palace to be built.
Don't be expecting something too palatial however, from the outside it's just another Venetian building and from the inside it's all a bit new. They've spent 2 years working on the place and everything inside looks very clean and new.
Things aren't quite 100% completed yet, but this was not a problem for us. The layout is a little strange, with an empty lobby to greet you on the ground floor and reception is found by climbing a flight of stairs
and entering an anonymous looking door. It's not quite as bad as it sounds!
Location
As mentioned, the hotel is in an area of Castello but is close to San Marco and Cannaregio. From a tourist perspective that's 5 minutes to the Rialto Bridge and 10 minutes to Piazza San Marco.
For us the location was ideal, it's easy to walk to anywhere in the city, well, the bits you can get to via bridge anyway. If you arrive at the bus or railway station then it'll be about 20-25 minutes to walk, don't take too much luggage as I imagine it wouldn't be much fun to drag that through Venice.
Finding the hotel is certainly a bit tricky. My plan was simply to cross the Rialto Bridge and follow a map from there. It is certainly a good idea to take a map with you, Venice isn't the easiest place to navigate. Even when you are in the vicinity of the hotel you will struggle to find it. There is no sign, no flag, just a little name plate above a doorbell. Take a note of the hotel's phone number, if you really cannot find it then you'll want to give them a call for help. Not sure if I can just put in a phone number here, so check their website http://www.venice-accommodations.com/bragadin/en/index.php
Services
The staff were very friendly and helpful, check-in was fast and there were no problems with my booking, They have a very handy free map to help you get around the city, definitely take one!
If you arrive early they will look after your bags if they cannot check you in. If you want to leave bags after checkout then they'll look after them then as well, standard stuff really but some places won't do it. Check-in is from 2pm, check out is 11am.
There is a small breakfast room by the reception desk, but it wasn't yet operating when we were there. They'll make you a hot drink if you request it, for around 2-3 Euros a time. We ordered a drink late one evening and I have to say it was undrinkable, I'm not sure what was up with the hot water but it didn't have a good smell or taste.
A strange feature of the hotel is that they don't make use of plastic key cards for the rooms. Each room has a good old fashioned key and they expect you to leave it at reception every time you leave the hotel. That wasn't a problem for us, but if things ever got busy it could be annoying. I'm not sure what they'd do if a key went missing.
Being so new, everything is very very clean. The corridors are pleasantly carpeted and nothing is marked or damaged, but give it time I suppose.
I think that the hotel had four floors of rooms and I couldn't see signs of an elevator.
The Room
As with everything else in the hotel the room was very clean. The room was also a good size and with a high ceiling it did feel quite spacious. There was a small sofa, a desk and chair, minibar, wardrobe and a small table each side of the bed. Suspended on the wall was a flat screen TV, but you won't find much in English on there except BBC World News and CNN. I don't go away to watch TV so I don't mind, but there was an American couple complaining about the lack of English speaking TV in reception one morning, so I guess some people would care.
The room had a queen bed, well actually it didn't. It was two beds put together and they did have a habit of moving apart from time to time which was a bit annoying. I didn't like the bedding much either, it was a sheet, blanket and cover. Even with the spare blanket from the wardrobe I didn't get the best sleep, I really like a nice thick, heavy comforter/duvet but not everyone is as fussy as me I'm sure. There were only three pillows in the room, two on the bed and one in the wardrobe. Four would have been nice.
There were light switches by the bed so you won't be jumping out when you want to switch them off, I know, you'd expect that wouldn't you, but you'd be surprised that not everywhere has these little features :-)
There were no tea/coffee making facilities in the room, a major downer for me. I like a coffee when I get up in the morning. As mentioned you could get drinks from reception but they didn't taste so good.
The bathroom was a decent size with a tiled floor. It only had a shower though, not a bath. There was a bidet but I don't think it would be big enough for bathing :-) We got two large towels, two hand towels and a face cloth. They also provided two small bars of Lux soap and three tiny sachets of shower gel. I guess you need to bring your own shampoo to this place, bring your own shower gel too if you don't like to use small soap bars as it never got replaced when we used the tiny sachets. Shower pressure was fine and the water warm enough.
Summary
I think for £45 this place offers excellent value for money. If a place is clean and cheap then that is usually enough for me. If you need those little extras however then it may be lacking slightly. If they added a kettle in the room and provided better bedding I'd be rating the place higher. In summer I imagine the price will increase and I would expect it to get higher than the current price for next winter too as the hotel becomes more established.
So if you're looking for somewhere cheap for now then this place is certainly acceptable and I would return for a short stay in the future. However, for a longer stay in the city I would possibly choose somewhere else.
(I've included a photo of the hotel entrance, to show how hard it is to spot. Apologies for the photo quality)
(also posted on dooyoo)
Pictures of Ca' Bragadin Carabba Hotel, Venice
23.07.2009 22:52
I'm off to Venice at the end of the year - I can't wait! x
25.03.2009 13:09
good, nice review
14.03.2009 23:21
good for the price - lyn x