Hotel La Fiorentina

We had planned to stay with the nuns - there is an organization in Switzerland called Pro Figlia where my mother and I had rented a room last time we visited - 10 years ago. I had tried to find a phone number or even an address, thinking I would make a reservation - but I could not find anything. On arrival, we discovered that the building had been turned into a youth hostel - and they only had a room available for one night!

Finding a hotel room (at a decent price) turned out to be more difficult than I had thought - we had arrived just in time for the International Film Festival in Locarno, and the city was swarming with tourists.

We managed to find a room above a bar, but I didn't feel very satisfied. Discovering that my mother had resigned and refused to go on searching for an alternative, I left her next morning at the youth hostel with our luggage. I decided to try the small hotels in the old part of the city, and not before long I managed to find vacancies at two hotels.

A street market and a beautiful medallion of Virgin Mary made me choose the Fiorentina hotel, situated in a pedestrian area - a small family-owned hotel, with a really nice elder couple running it. Not very luxurious, but we had our own bathroom, a TV and a mini-bar, perfect for storing water bottles and sandwiches and cheese and yoghurt and...