Sandie B.
Yelp
For a hotel with such an exalted name, and such great reviews on Booking.com, I had high expectations. We were excited to have a luxury experience in a small boutique hotel, and I could tell the moment we walked in that it was going to fall flat, starting with the rather drab lobby--not at all what the website photos portray. Most of the hotel was clearly redone with some slick touches, but ultimately isn't very traveler-friendly.
BREAKFAST - When I asked if breakfast was included, they were kind enough to give us one morning of free breakfast, which was very good, and served in a very pretty, elegant dining room. (The second morning, even though it was raining, we opted to skip the super expensive hotel breakfast and we found a place called Akeita in town that was fantastic and reasonably priced!)
LOCATION - It's about a 15 minute walk from the train and bus station. It's not exactly in the "heart" of town--it's on the edge, but it's a small town, so...close enough.
THE ROOMS - The bed was comfortable, and there were some comfortable chair in the room, which was nice. Otherwise, though, the rooms are TINY. I suppose if you're traveling alone it's not a problem. If you're sharing the room, good luck. First of all, there's no space to put anything. No luggage stands, so we had to make due putting one suitcase on a little bench, and the other on the floor. The guy who brought the bags up to our room was completely unapologetic about this. "Sorry--we have no more," he said before ducking out. In order to have space to put a few things, like a book and some tissues and my cell phone, on the nightstand, I had to put the phone and some of the decorative accessories on the floor. On the day we were leaving, they were kind enough to offer late checkout of 2pm, which really helped, since all the stores in town are closed every day from about 12pm - 2pm, so I wasn't sure what the heck I was going to do to until my late afternoon bus!
BATHROOM - The bathroom is very small with very little vanity space. We had to move all the towels from the shelf under the vanity to put our toiletries somewhere. And of course, that makes it easy to forget everything when you're checking out. There's no place to hang a hand towel anywhere even remotely close to the sink. The tiny shower stall is equipped with a giant rain shower head, and then a little low handheld sprayer. If you want to take a proper shower, you're using the rain shower, and when that thing is on, it takes up the entire tiny space so there's no reprieve--water constantly dripping all over your face and head. You can't get away from it. It's a gentle rain, which means it take forever to rinse shampoo from hair.
TISSUES - This was my biggest pet peeve. At a luxury hotel, everything should be luxurious. Including the facial tissues. I had a nasty cold the entire time I was there, and their tissues were like sandpaper. Really. Awful. I was so miserable that I eventually went to the pharmacy down the street and spend 5 Euros to get some softer tissues.
THE SPA - Because I was sick, I didn't book a massage. But I didn't want to miss out on the thassalotherapy (sp?) pool and the other amenities, since that was the whole reason I booked this hotel. It was certainly a relaxing place to sit and read, and the pool was interesting--not what I expected. I thought it would be warm like a hot tub, but I'm guessing it was only about 80 degrees. The very bubbly jets are just weird. And then along one wall, there are some very, very, very strong jets at varying heights. I tried them all--on my back, my IT bands, and my achilles. It felt pretty good while I was in there, but the next day, I was so sore I actually had to look to see if my back was bruised. (It wasn't--at least visibly.) Also, my skin has been really itchy since being in the pool. I'm not sure why that is...
