Halkova Hotel, Prague

...~ How I found the Halkova ~

If you don't already know a hotel that you want, don't ever start by typing 'Prague' and 'hotel' in a search engine - you'll be overwhelmed by the sheer number of Prague hotels and the diversity of booking sites to choose from. Find a booking site that gives you good information about the hotels in an easily accessible way. As a member of Trivago I suppose I should feel honour bound to suggest you start ...
...~

The Halkova caught my eye quite quickly - a small three star hotel in an old building with enormous rooms. The photos showed simple furniture but astonishingly high ceilings. It had just 12 rooms so I guessed it wouldn't be really noisy which is important for me. There was a a grand-looking staircase and a list price in the region of £85 for two nights.

I never trust EasyAnything to be the cheapest regardless of all ... more

Sometimes I really have to think long and hard about whether to write a review of a hotel that I like for fear of persuading others to use it and then finding I can't get a room next time I want one. So please consider yourselves honoured that I'm going to let you in on a secret and tell you about the hotel I found recently in Prague.

Why do so many people shun local hotels in favour of the international hotel chains? Well my guess is that they are looking for security - like American tourists hunting down McDonalds in Paris and Rome. They know they'll never get anything surprising but they know exactly what they WILL get. A hotel brand should guarantee a certain level of quality in return for sometimes paying well over the odds. So if you decide to pick an independent hotel at random will you end up in a bed-bug ridden filth pit or a place letting rooms by the hour? I'm not joking - it really can happen.

I recently had to go to Prague for work. Since it's a city my husband had never visited and had on his 'must see' list, this seemed too good a chance to miss so I cashed in a bunch of BA Miles to get him a ticket so we could go over two days before I needed to be there for work. The hotel we would be using for business - the Radisson SAS Alcron - was offering a 'special' rate of around £100 per night but I was confident I could find something with more character for a lot less money and the money I saved financed all our weekend activities.

~ How I found the Halkova ~

If you don't already know a hotel that you want, don't ever start by typing 'Prague' and 'hotel' in a search engine - you'll be overwhelmed by the sheer number of Prague hotels and the diversity of booking sites to choose from. Find a booking site that gives you good information about the hotels in an easily accessible way. As a member of Trivago I suppose I should feel honour bound to suggest you start with them but quite frankly their search facility on hotels is far too confusing for me.

I started my search with the EasyJet hotel site - I expect it's called EasyHotels or something equally obvious. I had no intention of booking with the site but it is a good one for narrowing down the options.

I wanted to be near to Wenceslas Square and close enough to walk to the hotel that I'd transfer to on the Sunday. I wanted all the central sites to be in easy walking distance because I can't be bothered to fathom out a public transport system when I have only a weekend and I'd heard a lot of bad things about Prague taxi drivers and their liberal interpretation of pricing.

Ideally I wanted an old building with a bit of character - not just another modular Portakabin style place of identical boxes that could be in any city in the world (if you've ever stayed in a Novotel, you will know what I mean by Portakabin hotels). I wanted a minimum of a two-star hotel and ideally to pay less than £50 a night.

~ Why did I choose the Halkova? ~

The Halkova caught my eye quite quickly - a small three star hotel in an old building with enormous rooms. The photos showed simple furniture but astonishingly high ceilings. It had just 12 rooms so I guessed it wouldn't be really noisy which is important for me. There was a a grand-looking staircase and a list price in the region of £85 for two nights.

I never trust EasyAnything to be the cheapest regardless of all their claims, so having found a hotel I liked the look of, I then 'googled' it and checked out four or five other sites until I'd found a deal with alpharooms at just under £72 for the two nights. This left me with £128 more dosh to play with than if I'd gone for the Radisson. I charged the hotel to my credit card and kept my fingers crossed that I'd picked something that I wouldn't regret.

~ Can you book direct? ~

If you wanted to book direct with the Halkova you will struggle because they don't have a website. They are actually an off-shoot of the Hotel Venezia which is round the corner on a much busier road. The Venezia does have a website and contact details and might take a booking for you. Not being able to contact the Halkova was a bit of a headache - I wanted to let the hotel know that we would be arriving late but couldn't track down a phone number for love or money and had to ring the booking agency and ask them to pass on a message.

~ Arriving and first impressions~

Arriving at the hotel I did have a moment of thinking 'Oh hell, what have I done?' At 11.30 pm the street was deadly quiet and from the outside there was very little indication that this building was a hotel - just a small brass plaque with the name of the hotel next to a lot of business names. We pushed the buzzer and nothing happened. 'Curses' I thought 'That's the last time I trust a booking site I've never heard of'. At the second attempt the door was buzzed open and we were in. The lady in the small and not very impressive looking reception apologised that she'd had an overwhelming urge for chocolate and had to pop out to the grocery shop up the road. She gave us our key, showed us to a tiny lift and took us up to our room.

~ The Room ~

The room was off a fabulously grand staircase. We opened the first door which led to three more doors off an inner vestibule. This arrangement gave extra sound insulation between us and the staircase. Our room was on the front of the building and we were stunned. The photos on the website had made the room look big but I always assume that's a bit of trick photography - the type that's generally used to make a tiny puddle in a health club look like an Olympic-sized swimming pool. The room was even bigger than the photo suggested. A large double bed was in the middle of the room with two single beds lengthwise along the walls. This was the sort of room where 4 people could sleep comfortably whilst a dozen more danced around the floor space and my room at the Radisson two days later would have fitted in the Halkova room twice over.

The ceilings were at least 12 feet high and the window was enormous. In addition to the beds, there was a large wardrobe, a small chest of draws, a desk, a TV cabinet and two bedside cabinets. The walls were painted in white and the room was spotlessly clean.

Next thing to check was the bathroom - always a slightly nerve-racking moment. We threw open the door to find a mid-sized bathroom with a shower, toilet and sink, plenty of towels and some basic toiletries. The walls were tiled up to about 7 feet - after all, what's the point in tiling to the ceiling when it's that far away? Like the bedroom, the bathroom was very clean.

~ Breakfast ~

Breakfast is included in the room rate and is served in the basement in a room with so many modem points and power sockets that it must surely have been used as an office or internet café at some point in its recent history. The breakfast was served until 10 am and there was plenty of food - nothing particularly exceptional (cereal, breads, cheese and ham, yoghurts, juice, coffee and tea) but more than enough to set you up for a day of sight-seeing. The breakfast room was the only place where we ever ran into any of the other guests.

~ The Location ~

The main reason for choosing the hotel was the location (and the ceilings) so maybe this justifies a bit more information. If you turn left out of the hotel and walk to the top of the road then turn left again and walk for two blocks you will find yourself at the National Museum at the top end of Wenceslas Square in just 5-10 minutes. For a premium you could be closer but not without sacrificing some of the peace and quiet we found at the Halkova.

~ Any niggles? ~

On the whole we loved this little simple hotel but if forced to reveal a couple of small problems I'd admit that the curtains were not big enough for the windows and I suspect that in order to really have got them to close fully, you'd have to practically pull the rail off the wall. As we were visiting at the end of February and it didn't get light early in the morning, this wasn't a big problem but would have driven me potty in the summer. The curtains themselves didn't block out much light.

The shower head was incompatible with the wall fixture so it just wouldn't stay in place when in use so I had to wash with one hand and hold the head with the other - not a great hardship but a bit of a nuisance.

If you want a 'full service' hotel with people around all day at your beck and call to serve you drinks and bring you food then this isn't the right sort of place. There's no bar and food is only served at breakfast time although there may be chocolate, crisps and beer available in reception - if the receptionist hasn't had the munchies and eaten all the chocolate.

I did have a moment of despair when I leaned out of the window and spotted that the building next door seemed to be undergoing renovation work - but the builders (bless them) didn't start work until about 10 am the next day and didn't work at all on Sunday. I also spotted what looked like a factory unit in the building opposite but there was no work going on all weekend. The street we were on was a quiet one-way side street and our sleep was not disturbed by any traffic noise which is important to me; we live somewhere so quiet you could hear a sparrow cough so I'm very sensitive to noise.

~ Talking of sight-seeing ~

The reception area has lots of leaflets about what you can see and do in Prague and they can book tours for you if you ask. They will also be able to give you a free map of the city and help you with directions.

~ The Staff ~

The staff are mostly young, possibly students and they are friendly and non-intrusive - they are there if you need them but they'll let you get on with your stay without bothering you if that's what you prefer.

~ The Clientele ~

On the two nights we stayed, the guest list suggested that at least 80% of the rooms were booked by Brits - maybe nobody else wants to go to Prague in February. There were no rowdy 'stag groups' - it was mostly couples or families.

~Recommended for ~
1. Great location.
2. Large, bright spotlessly clean rooms with fantastic ceilings and simple furnishings.
3. Big breakfast included
All for just £36 per night.

~ Don't book if you want ~
24 hour room service, a swimming pool and gym, a bar and restaurant, a hotel that looks like a hotel from the outside.  

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