We stayed at A Casa Di Cristina for two separate nights at the beginning and the end of our holiday. It consists of three bedrooms each with bathroom (only one en suite), a sitting room and a kitchen in a self-contained apartment on the first floor of an apartment block in an urban area of Bergamo. The owner, Cristina, lives in another apartment across the landing.

Cristina was pleasant enough but spoke little English or French, so we had to manage with our minimal Italian.

Breakfast is "self-service"; packeted bread and cakes, packeted processed cheese and sausages, a yoghurt each, some kids' cereal and (only on one of our two stays) some eggs. Some of the more interesting cakes and yoghurts had disappeared by the mornings, so we had to have what was left. Cristina was not about, and we didn't take her up on her offer to contact her if there was a problem (partly because we had to catch a plane that morning).

The rooms were clean and the linen was OK - two towels and a flannel tied with a ribbon! The blue room was very blue; we'd asked for the extra bed for our 13 year old son, and we had to pay 20 Euro extra. LateRooms says this bed is free for children up to 8, although she says it's free up to 4; she describes it as a baby bed but it's as long as the double bed is wide, so it was OK. However, with the 3rd bed in the room it was pretty squashy.

The shower had no curtain so it was basically a choice of sitting down in the bath or drenching the floor. Otherwise OK (one bulb not working above washbasin).

The kitchen was clean enough, but because it was shared you are a bit dependent on the habits of the other lodgers. It is not entirely satisfactory if they don't feel the need to wash up pans etc, especially if you want to use one yourself; although there were about 6 in total, plus kettle and teapot. There is a big Espresso machine which seemed to be quite popular.

Because it's a shared apartment you are also less in control of your environment. Our fellow-lodgers were up late watching television with the volume on quite loud. We had to catch a plane in the morning.

Parking is on the public street; there are marked spaces, but not enough, so when we got back to the apartment in the evening there was nowhere to park; we had to park outside the take-away pizza premises up the road. It could have been worse, and nothing was damaged.

I found it quite hard to find; it's quite a rabbit warren of streets, some one-way, and the ring-road has some rather original junctions. We got badly lost the first time. The trick was to follow "Valle Brembana" and "Valle Imagna" until you see signs for "Stadio", then once you leave the ring road it's two rights and a left.

Bergamo is a much bigger city than I imagined, and the outskirts seem very built up. We had hoped to walk to the old city in the evening, but since it was about 2 km we chose to drive instead - you can park in the evening on Via Della Fara just inside the North wall of the city. It was well worth a visit.

Cristina recommends an Argentinian restaurant in Via Borgo Santa Caterina nearby; we used the Pizzeria called Vesuvio which someone else recommended as we wanted a more Italian meal.