BACKGROUND: My husband and I were visiting friends in northern Bavaria last summer, and decided it would be quickest to drive down from Frankfurt. I've visited Frankfurt on several occasions in recent years, usually for the International Book Fair, and whilst I have no complaints about the city itself, I've generally no real inclination to linger there any longer than necessary. My husband, however, had never been to Frankfurt before, so we decided to break our trip and spend a night in the city en route. I booked our room at the four-star Hotel National online, about a week in advance.

THE HOTEL: The Hotel National is very centrally located, almost directly opposite the Hauptbahnhof, an imposing edifice that houses Frankfurt's main train station. We found it without any difficulty whatsoever. The hotel's exterior seemed a little more dated than its publicity photos had led me to expect, but it is nevertheless unimpeachably clean and well presented. Whilst my husband waited outside, I went in to inquire about parking and was told that we could leave our car in the hotel's car park around the back, but that we would have to surrender our keys, and wouldn't be able to move the car again until the following morning. This sounded like a rather peculiar and inconvenient arrangement, but the proverbial penny dropped with a clunk when we sighted the 'car park' concerned. This was actually little more than a glorified driveway, and a fairly narrow, and not especially long driveway, at that. Such factors were but minor impediments to the hotel's determined little clerk, however, who somehow contrived to install ten or twelve cars along its length.

Our room was at the end of a hall, and overlooked the Baseler Strasse. I've encountered all manner of door locks in hotels over the years, from those conventional keys with a heavy metal barbell attached, to plastic swipe cards and code-operated entrances. However I was utterly defeated by the system at the National, which seemed to require a very deft and impossibly specific flick of the wrist to operate it. I vaguely recalled the clerk having mentioned something about the door earlier, but my mind had been elsewhere. Besides, it had seemed at the time like the sort of information that is little more than a blah blah statement-of-the-obvious, like those security drills on airlines, the sort of thing one tends to blank out… The prospect of skulking back downstairs and asking him to repeat his instructions did not appeal. Anyway, my husband had a go then, and after a couple of minutes of twiddling, pressing and cursing we finally heard a promising 'click' and the door was open.

Having dropped our things, we collapsed on the bed, and watched the awful events unfolding in London. We had tried to call various people, but had been unable to get through. It was an awful afternoon, memorable for all the wrong reasons. At one point, I went out to get something for us to eat, and had wandered across the road towards the train station. An outdoor marquee had been set up in the sunshine, more of a beer tent, really, selling bratwurst and pretzels and cider on tap. The atmosphere here seemed almost perversely festive, with folksy music blaring amidst laughter and the sizzling of sausages…and it struck me quite forcefully that life really does go on.

BREAKFAST: Breakfast at the National, which was served in the main dining room, was little short of superb. It was possibly one of the best breakfasts I've had in a hotel of this type, with a scrumptious array of breads and fresh pastries, wonderful eggs prepared on demand, lashings of plump smoked salmon, and a top notch selection of cheeses. I could easily have lingered over it for an hour, and might as well have, because once we had finished and went across to check out, we discovered that our car was blocked in. It seemed the hotel's ingenious one-way car parking system had hit an inevitable snag… Namely, the car parked two behind us had broken down, and couldn't be moved, and they were waiting for a mechanic to come and resolve the situation. Still, once again, the staff were all so friendly and apologetic about this that we found ourselves feeling completely unperturbed… and we simply sat in the lobby and waited patiently.

FURTHER INFORMATION: The Hotel National has a total of 71 rooms. A high-speed, wireless internet connection is available throughout the hotel. Room service is available from the hotel's restaurant during meal times. Ciao's listing (above) suggests that the hotel has 2 stars, but this has since been upgraded to 4. The hotel certainly appeared to have been recently refurbished when we were there. Rooms cost from 95-145 Euros for a double.