I was in the Royal Marines for 11 yrs. I retired to study geophysics and have been a freelance con...
I was in the Royal Marines for 11 yrs. I retired to study geophysics and have been a freelance consultant since 1980. I live with my wife in West Dorset and travel through my work about 6 mths per year. I have worked in over 50 countries worldwide.
The KK Opera Hotel wasn't my choice and I have mixed views about it. I'll be brief and to the point - no point in padding this one out
Location: Well being by the river is great, but this is in the centre of the old city , and is within spitting distance of the magnificent Opera House and right by the Opera Metro station; you can walk comfortably to the river in under 15 mins.
As a four star hotel costing £80-90 a night I would call this a 3 star 4 star hotel. It had some good feature and it had some bad features.
Let's start with the bad features.
1.The room was by my own experience of 4star hotels, a bit on the small side.
2.The bathroom/toilet door
was spring loaded. Metal to metal door latches at even a moderate speed makes a resounding and irritating crash. Not good for the occupant, not good for the neighbours especially at 4 in the morning. Not being a person who closes the toilet door when I'm alone in a hotel room I found this particularly brain crunching.
3.The shower controls. A horizontal stainless steel tube. Now if you wear reading glasses you don't normally go for a shower with them on.
But if there are only microscopic red or blue dots to work out where and which way to turn the taps, you need glasses. I couldn't actually see any dots without my reading glasses and I was in the shower cubicle for a full five minutes gingerly turning the tube ends. Having once turned on the wrong tap in similar circumstances in a 4-star hotel in Central Africa, I was bending over at the time, and was seriously scalded in the nether regions and then bashed my head in the ensuing knee jerk reaction.
The fact that the hot water also took five minutes to reach peak heat, also made the whole exercise very confusing.
This design masterpiece, or more correctly catastrophe, probably won accolades for a spotty faced young student with a huge technology grant thrown in, but it isn't in the real world. Please can't hotels go back to the practical world of large clearly marked handles or taps.?
4.Noise from next door. The rooms were badly soundproofed. Next door's TV was on full all afternoon until 2000. A bit like other people's getto blasters on the beach, did I really need to hear the Hungarian news broadcast? No I didn't. I reciprocated the favour by turning my TV on full at 0600 while I went for breakfast. Bad.
And finally the good features . As I have already said, the location was pretty good on the whole with access to all sorts of boutiques, the opera, restaurants. Historic buildings etc.
There is a restaurant called the Belcanto which is right outside the main door and on the corner of the same building. It has a famous reputation for its singing waiters. I looked through the windows but didn't fancy it alone but it looked like fun. It certainly received a rave mention in another Ciao review of Budapest.
My one really big accolade was for the staff - they were so friendly and efficient. I tend to eat in my hotel when I'm alone and I had lunch, dinner and the free breakfast. The food that I paid for was fine. The waitress where I had dinner was so ahead of the game - without even looking in my direction - there were plenty of other diners - she seemed to know instinctively when I wanted something else and almost appeared by telepathy.
Breakfast was a large self service buffet and was comprehensive. I didn't drink from the ubiquitous fish tank containing "fresh" orange juice. I gambled on a couple of lumps of pre-dawn scrambled egg and regretted it. But perhaps I'm being unreasonably fastidious. It's at times like this that I think of those millions of people starving in Africa and realise how fortunate I am. The coffee was good too.
The reception girls could not have been friendlier. It was raining the day I left and I wanted to buy something from a boutique round the corner. There was a rack full of umbrellas - just what I needed - nice touch.
The room girl was also really friendly too - I don't beg subservience but she curtsied when I left (really!) and wished me a good voyage - in English - cute.
I so know what you mean about badly marked up taps. In the UK you can generally assume left is hot, right is cold but even so I've scorched myself badly when a plumber has done them the other wasy round.
pennywa 23.03.2008 12:52
I do love a GOOD shower and this wasn't, was it?? Fab review!! xxxxxxxxx
tune57 22.03.2008 14:26
For some strange reason, only known to Ciao, I didn't get an alert for this, and only found it by accident, so my apologies for the late rating. The shower you described reminded me of the one in my very first flat, very odd and difficult to use. Sounds like you had good service though.
Wonder if your neighbour was a tad on the deaf side lol.
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