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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

Pictures of Halkova Hotel, Prague

Doesn't look much like a hotel from outside

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

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.

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.

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.

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.

~ 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.