Lodging Review: B&B Dei Cardinale, Bari, Italy
Looking for a hotel room for 3 people can be challenging sometimes, but the B&B Dei Cardinale in the old town of Bari (Città Vecchia) was a find.
I came across it on Booking.com, which is where I usually book my hotels in Italy. I thought I had actually booked a B&B with the host available during normal hours to greet guests, so I was a big surprised to get a message through Booking with the instructions for how to open the lockbox to get the keys to enter. I’ve kind of given up on Airbnbs as of the last several years because I like the security of someone being on property always, but this wasn’t too bad.
Just inside the door was a rack with the room keys, plus an article about Michele, the host. And a reminder of their high rating on Booking!
This was the ground floor - I guess we’d have breakfast here the next morning.
Just up the stairs one floor up was our room. With very tall ceilings! My twin bed was in the room in front. The closet was in this room.
My parents’ double bed was in the room in the back. There was a little mini fridge here.
In between the rooms, right in front of the door, was the modern, clean, and functional bathroom.
The room out front had a tiny balcony with a view onto the street! Directly across was the wall of a church, Chiesa di San Giacomo.
The B&B is the blue building on the right, with the Christmas lights. You can see it’s the width of just the stairs and the room!
The next morning, Michele was downstairs preparing breakfast. I think there was only one other room occupied, and they were already downstairs eating. They were talking about getting supplies because one of them was sick - I think with COVID! Having just come out of China which had just abandoned its zero-COVID policy just a couple weeks prior, this was a big unsettling to hear, as they were eating just next to us.
Anyway, breakfast was quite a delightful spread! I was surprised how much “fresh” food there was. I stayed at a B&B by Lake Como once, and the innkeeper there told us that they weren’t allowed to serve anything that wasn’t packaged, I believe because the license for a B&B is different than a hotel with a restaurant. So I was expecting more pre-packaged food, but luckily that wasn’t the case.
There were warm, freshly baked croissants.
Toast, topped with tomatoes, olive oil, and cheese.
A variety of cold cuts.
Cheese, and what Michele pointed out was “local ricotta.” Delicious!
Michele was very friendly, and very proud to explain to us that his house had been in his family for generations, and he had renovated it with a lot of attention to detail. It was very nicely done!
I’d love to stay at B&B Dei Cardinale again. Its location is very convenient right inside of the pedestrian old town, while it’s also quite close to the road that goes around the town, so you we didn’t have to carry luggage very far to get to the car that was taking us to Matera next.
