The Golden Crown wasn't my first choice of hotel but it was all there was available, as booked by our travel agent. Normally i stay in the Dan Carmel on the top of Mount Carmel or the Dan Panorama just along the road, but both were full - i think probably due to all the holidays around that time. The Crown is at the bottom of Mount Carmel near the port, and is advertised as a "4-star" property. It's quite unobtrusive and you could walk past not knowing it was there.
After checking in i got my key to a "deluxe" double, the mid-level room of the 3 types they appear to have. I was on the 4th floor, the single elvator has a nice view of the port even if the glass windows are quite dirty; i resisted the urge to take a picture considering the Israeli navy presence there - You never know who's watching... Again i was right at the end of the corridor, and going in i was quite disappointed at how small the room is. The bathroom faces the entrance with the bed and a small desk to the right side. They left a small welcome gift, which all went into the small, empty mini-fridge. The bed was comforable enough but felt a little small, and certainly no space for anything much apart from sleeping, using the bathroom or working at the desk. The chair doesn;t even face the TV, although i never turned the TV on during the entirety of my stay.
Welcome gift
a small "deluxe" room
Shower with no towel rail
No room to do anything much except sleep, no space for an open case
small desk and fridge
Being a corner room i at least had 2 windows, south towards Mount Carmel and west facing towards the Med. Apparently the hotel does have a bar but i could never find it, although i only looked once and couldn;t be bothered to ask. There is no restaurant though - only a breakfast area, which may, or may not be an advantage.
View from the south facing window
It was a little warm in there. It was about 20C outside, and felt a little more than that in the room. The air-con control made beeping noises when i tried pushing buttons - no instructions - so i thought i'd give it 24 hours. In the mean-time, as it was after 6.15pm and the sun had disappeared behind Mount Carmel i opened the windows to try and let some of the cooler air in. It was a little noisy outside so i closed the windows when i went to sleep. That only made the room stuffy and i found it quite difficult to sleep in.
Breakfast was served from 6am-10am, so went down early to see what was on offer. A reasonable selection of typical breakfast fair, but also a lot of Israeli or arab dishes. For the first day at least i thought i'd live the local dishes a try. I have though no idea what the selection i took was, although i intentionally choose items that didn't look overly spiced.
Taxi pickup time was 7.30. I waited outside from 7.20 be be sure that i didn't miss mine. A number of taxis all turned up all for other travellers; almost all of them with differnt accents - Spanish, French, Russian, and Hebrew of course. It's clearly a business hotel with a lot of business coming from the port and very few tourists - they're in the bigger hotels in the centre of town on the top of Mount Carmel. Eventually mine arrived about 15 minutes late due to traffic on the way from Nazareth. As we started to leave Haifa the traffic was obviously very heavy going into the town, but not a problem for me - off to work in the opposite direction. It was around a 40 minute drive to the Nazareth area with the driver, a russian Georgian called Eli, who freely gave his opinion of lots of global news stories ongoing at the time (whether i wanted them or not
). Something to pass the time. It turned out that Eli would be my driver in the morning each day bar one, and gave different opinions on different events each day.
Outskirts of Haifa in the direction of Nazareth
The return journey was much the same, although the driver changed, and typically a lot less chatty. even though i was the only passenger, 3 times in the course of the week i was in a 19 seater mini-bus - all for me!
After the underwhelming success of finding a restaurant "the other side of the station", i thought i'd find somewhere else by myself. A quick check of Google Maps show this time there was a whole street of eateries just around the corner which sounded much more promising. As i got there there was indeed a street full of restaurants right around the corner, slightly uphill towards the Bab Shrine and gardens.
After a stroll around seeing what was available i chose the Garden restaurant, a decent looking place with a covered, mostly empty terrace. I asked for a table for 1 at the entrance and was told they were completely full that night. "Really?" i asked in surprise, gesticulating to all the empty table? Yes, everything reserved, no chance even for 1 person. Huh, fine; quite a difference to the night before where they could find me a table when they were obviously busy.
So i walked 20m next door to the similarily busy "Shtroudl" restaurant and asked another table for 1 and was offered a choice of several tables. Once seated i chose again another HefeWeissen, an Arab cheese salad, and then the veal shawarma. This arrived as 3 mini pitas, each filled with nicely flavoured veal. Again the whole meal was too much for me, so resolved to try and chose slightly smaller portion for the rest of the week.
Upon leaving i thought i'd carry on walking for a while and headed back up the hill past the Garden restaurant that declined to offer me a table an hour or so earlier, sarcastically asking "still fully booked, still no space for 1 person?" "Yes, no space", even though they were barely 20% of the terrace tables full, and it was now approaching 9pm - past the peak i would have thought. So thats one place i'll not be going back to in the next week. Back to the hotel for a few hours work, and then bed ready to do it over again the next day.
Next: Monday and Tuesday