David R.
Yelp
I hate to be the guy with the pin in the balloon factory, but I thought that this hotel is highly over-rated. The location is fine if you are taking the train, as it's just across the street from the train station and is really across the street from the historic old city, which is still surounded by the original walls. The city is absolutely worth a visit, but this review isn't about that.
We drove down from Munich after an over-night in Austria and were looking forward to a long soak in their spa. We had a booked a "Junior Suite" for a two night stay during a road trip through Bavaria. Guess what? No spa. There was nothing sweet about our "Suite" either. How do you define "suite," anyway? Doesn't a "suite" usually have a seating area separate from the bedroom? Not here, it doesn't. We basically had a smallish room with a high ceiling, a small bathroom, no iron or ironing board in the room, drapes that didn't close completely so the room was not completely dark at night (don'tcha really hate that?), and worse - no in-room coffee!! So if you want coffee in the morning, yoou have to call room service and they'll send up a guy with a pot and charge you E6 for the brew and E4 for the delivery. So that's like $16 for two cups of not-very-good joe.
After remonstrating with front desk, they deducted the coffee both mornings. Thanks, guys.
The good: the front desk personnel were really excellent, responsive, and helpful. So thumbs up there. The included breakfast was self-serve, but multiple and excellent choices, with the exception of the young lady who was presiding over the fresh egg station. Nil English; but worse, couldn't flip an egg without breaking the yolks. Also, they handle food without wearing any gloves for health reasons. Nice to know they think their hands are clean, but when you see a guy arranging cheese slices on a plate using his bare hands - not a predictor of food-prep sanitation. I found this issue to be the same wherever I was in Germany - bare-hands on your food all the time. Yech!
The bad: see comments in preceding paragraph about food sanitation and egg-flipping and below about the burger.
The ugly: the room decor. Hard-edged, cold, neo-modern, no gemutlichkeit whatsover! The desk space is very limited, although there is plenty of room for a bigger desk.
(Getting close to the end...) I have learned first-hand what it means to live under a nanny government. Our last night at the hotel, after returning from the Nuremberg Opera (Die Walkurie in an ass-kickin' production), we had a jones for a burger. But it was late and raining (as usual), so we decided to follow the recommendation of the front desk and eat in the pub. Couldn't get a medium rare burger no way. The EU specifies that a hamburger cannot be served unless it has had all the flavor and moisture burned out of it (kinda sounds like Minnesota, hey?) Also, their meat is quite different from ours, so don't expect anything remotely edible in the burger line.) We did like our waitress, though. Spunky, bright, spent time in Australia, wants to visit NY soon.
All in all, not a big improvement over a Holiday Inn Suite. It was very different the next night at the Meridien in Stuttgart, though! (See that review coming up.) Oh yeah, one last thing - all the hotels we stayed at in both Germany and Austria have a king bed but with two separate duvets - one for each occupant. Not really posssible to get skin-on-skin easily. Maybe that accounts for their low birth-rate? Just saying...