Things that will surprise you about hotels in Europe

Showers shouldn't be this complicated

The concept of a shower is not difficult to grasp. Hot tap, cold tap, perforated head and bingo, but many Europeans are baffled and they have to complicate things. One device to regulate the water flow and another to control temperature, with a little red button if you want something warmer than tepid. Also, the shower might be a handpiece rather than a fixed item on the end of a hose. Turn it on and the thing will blast itself off the wall, drenching your hair when you just washed it a week ago, or squirting over the shower curtain and onto your towel. Even worse when there is no wall fitting for the shower head. The shower head lies in a cradle device on top of the taps. This is annoying in the extreme since it means you'll have to lather with one hand while rinsing off with the handpiece in the other, or else stand there getting cold while lathering up both hands before you can wash off. Also, showers are tight so forget all about showering a deux. Finally, the shower curtain. Occasionally missing. How can anyone even think it possible to shower without a shower curtain? You can now either drench the whole bathroom or squat in the cubicle or the bathtub.

See also: The 15 most bizarre requests from hotel guests

Breakfast coffee will be truly awful, that's a given

The British hotel breakfast is a fist-pumping wonder. Bacon, scrambled eggs, toast, lashings of butter and thick cut marmalade, possibly even kippers if you're lucky. The best meal you can have in England is breakfast three times a day. Elsewhere in Northern European, pretty good – cheeses, sausage meats, ham, eggs, great bread, muesli sometimes and not too bad coffee. Move south toward the Mediterranean and breakfast is all downhill. In the kind of hotel where I usually stay in Paris breakfast is served in a cheerless basement room. The buffet might consist of boiled eggs with greying yolks and soft, squishy croissants with sachets of condiments that all taste the same. The coffee will be truly awful, that's a given. In Italy, do not eat breakfast in your hotel, it's a really bad start to the day.

Get ready to climb

Your room might be several floors up but if you're travelling on the cheap, there's no lift. You'll be doing your own heavy lifting, possibly up a steep, narrow and winding staircase. Bump your wheelie case up the stairs and you can expect a telling off from the front desk.

Also, there's no such thing as a big, fluffy towel

The idea of a towel as a big, fluffy wraparound item capable of absorbing moisture is a novel concept to the European mind. This is one of the improvements that modern America has bestowed upon us, and we might foolishly believe that the affection for a towel as something that sucks up moisture like a hungry sponge is universal. It's not. In southern parts of Europe in particular, your towel might have all the consistency and drying power of a cardboard box. Their towels merely rearrange the droplets. They're also just slightly larger than a tea towel.

See also: Stupid things hotel guests do

You get your own duvets, but there's a catch

You might call it a doona but the rest of the world calls it a duvet, and if you're partnered up in a double bed, you might find you've each got your own half-bed duvet. On a cold night, this almost guarantees you'll wake up with a chilly limb since the duvet is not quite big enough to cover every bit of an average-sized adult bod. On the other hand you won't have those awkward you-hogged-the-covers discussions in the morning.

See also: Twenty things that will shock first-time visitors to Europe

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