Looking for Lodgings, part 1

Sadly, especially since the Jubilee in 2000, the city’s convent hostels and hotels have truly discovered the tourist dollar and euro. Convents that in my pre-1999 guidebook were listed as 45-50,000 lira (about $30-40) are 70€ now – which is just under $100 US and that was for a single. Settling for a bathroom down the hall got it down to perhaps $80 US, but that still made my heart lurch in despair as I thought about the 10 days I hoped to stay.
There was no point in going if my lodging cost so much that I could not afford museum admission fees, etc. And the cheaper convent hotels all seemed to be on the far side of Vatican City or otherwise not centrally located, which would add train and bus time to all excursions to the Centro Storico – or historical center. i.e. where all the ruins and museums and classical churches and other points of interest are clustered.
So I started looking for alternatives. First I looked online for pensiones, the European version of a bed & breakfast, only to discover that most of what was billed as a pensione was a cheap hotel offering a continental breakfast, many with really awful online reviews. I’m really not too fussy, but I do need a reasonably comfortable bed (yes, it’s true, at home I sleep on a heated waterbed with a featherbed on top. Do not call me Princess. In the spirit of this blog, call me Principessa!) and a clean bathroom, preferably my own. Thank you.
Needless to say, at 50+, the idea of a youth hostel was right off the list from the beginning.
However, finding a single room inside my budget - which I'd hoped to keep under $75 US a day - was not looking like a hot prospect. I had a short list of possibilities, but reading online reviews, even with a grain of salt, showed that the pickings were likely to be far less than ideal in either price, location or cleanliness. Frankly, I couldn't really understand the people who carped about decor - I wasn't under the impression that anyone would go to Rome for the purpose of sitting in a hotel room and admiring the decor, Heck, I don't even care if the sheets match, as long as they are clean.