Astoria, Bled

When looking to book a hotel in Bled I was quite put out by the prices. Slovenia is not an inexpensive country as regards hotel accommodation and it seemed that to get anything decent we wouldn't be getting much change out of €100. Finally, after a bit of searching, we managed to book the Hotel Astoria for what turned out to be a very reasonable €80 from those nice people at expedia. So we duly booked.

Getting There, Checking In etc.

The hotel is situated 300m from Lake Bled and the park, and 500m from the town centre. It's also quite close to Bled Castle.
On arriving in town it's relatively easy to find, situated at the far end, close to the bus station. It's well signposted anyway.

The hotel doesn't have a great deal of parking but it seemed to me that they cater for a lot of bus tours and not so many guests arriving by car so we never had a problem parking our car almost right at the door. What's more, the parking is free.

The hotel building couldn't really be described as attractive, not even by fans of 60's style architecture, well maybe by them, but not by me. It wouldn't have looked out of place in Lloret de Mar.
On the plus side, the hotel sits a little way up the hill from the lake and with five floors we were hoping for a decent view over the lake from the balcony.

The reception area was quite roomy and welcoming but a little old-fashioned with the restaurant occupying a large proportion of the ground floor. The staff were efficient and friendly and we were checked in in no time at all.

Our Room

There are a choice of rooms at this hotel: superior rooms which have been upgraded and classed as 4 stars, and un-renovated rooms which are classed as 3 stars. We chose the 4 star option mainly for the fact that these had AC, but also because I didn't really fancy the idea of an 'un-renovated' room.

This turned out to be a wise choice as whilst our room was classed as superior, I couldn't help thinking, "superior to what?" It's all relative, I suppose.

The room was modern and very clean but it was small. There was a comfortable queen size bed which pretty much dominated the floor space and left only enough room for the wardrobe, mini-bar and drawers and work desk fixed to the opposite wall. The storage space was adequate for our needs but I've no idea where you'd store your luggage if you travelling with full size cases.
There was an old fashioned TV but the picture was good and we had just short of a gazillion channels to choose from in every language imaginable and even a large selection in English. Not that it really mattered as it was during the World Cup and that pretty much dominated TV viewing.

We did indeed have a balcony overlooking the lake. Well, we would have if we had been on a higher floor. Good sized balcony that it was, complete with table and chairs, the accommodation block is actually set back from the main entrance and we overlooked the roof of the reception and restaurant. What made it worse was the fact that any view of the castle we may have had was obscured by trees. Not that it mattered much anyway as it rained most of the time we were there and the low cloud pretty much shrouded the castle anyway.
The AC was good though. Or it would have been if it had been warm enough to consider using it.

The bathroom was spotless but small, in fact bathroom is a bit of a misnomer as there was no bath, only had a shower. The toiletries were a little on the stingy side too but the towels were large and fluffy. For me, as long as it's clean, I don't care too much about the other stuff anyway.

We didn't avail ourselves of any of the hotel's amenities (not even sure there are any) although we did have breakfast which was alright. Plenty of choice from the cold buffet and they cooked eggs and sausages etc to order. Maybe not the best breakfast ever, but certainly not the worst and plenty of it.

In conclusion, we did notice better situated hotels in Bled insofar as they were lake-side, and some of them looked pretty impressive (according to their brochures at least) but the prices more than matched. The Astoria was a reasonable price and the location couldn't really be beaten. It's far enough away from the 'action' to remain quiet at night (although the road outside is fairly busy during the day), but there are shops, cafes, bars and restaurants literally a few steps from the hotel entrance, and a few minutes walk through parkland and alongside the lake brings you to the heart of the town.
Probably the most negative aspect of this hotel was the size of the room, otherwise I had no problems with it.

©proxam2010