A couple of weekends ago my boyfriend and I went to a wedding in Ireland. We were going to arrive late at night so I thought it was best if we stayed in a hotel near the airport on the night we arrived, and then go on to our final destination on the following morning.

I searched on Lastminute.com and found the ‘Travelodge Dublin Airport Ballymun’. It was a 3* hotel and on lastminute cost a mere £41.52 for a double room, but the best part was that (I thought) it was close to the airport.

When we arrived it seems that there were no shuttle buses running to the hotel, so we jumped in a taxi thinking that the hotel wasn’t too far away.. then we started driving, and driving and driving. There are a lot of road works going on around Dublin airport so the taxi driver couldn’t take the closest exit to go to the hotel, so we ended up paying €20 for the taxi fare. I was a bit miffed at it all, even without the road works the hotel is a fair drive. I think there should be some rule as to how hotels use the word ‘airport’ in their title. I think they should be in very close proximity to the airport to use it!

When we got to the hotel I was surprised how big it was. It has a large car park at the side of it, so plenty of spaces for lots of guests. When we arrived it was late, and the building was lit up by bright lights from the outside, so there was mistaking it was the hotel. We went inside via the automatic doors and went to the reception desk. We stood there for a moment waiting for the receptionist to finish on the computer, but she just completely ignored us. When she finally decided to deal with us, she made it seem like we were really inconveniencing her, which I didn’t feel to be very customer friendly. Check in was really easy, all we had to do is give her our name and she found our reservation and gave us our key card. We had no forms to fill in and didn’t have to give any further information.

We got our key card and went up to our room. I was pleasantly surprised when we got to our room, it was larger than I thought it was going to be and had both a double bed and a single bed. The room was en-suite with a bathtub, and the bathroom was very clean. There was complimentary soap next to the sink, but no other complimentary toiletries, but this was fine by me as I always take my own stuff anyway! The bathroom was decorated with terracotta-coloured tiles, which covered the entire bathroom, and had a large mirror that filled most of the wall next to the sink. I’m not sure I would have chosen that particular colour of tiles, but I did really like how the bathroom looked with all the tiled surfaces.

The room was decorated in quite a generic Travelodge way. I have stayed in other Travelodge hotels and they all seem to have the same room décor. There were two large mirrors on the wall, a desk, a table and chair, a large wardrobe, three bedside tables and bed side lights. The room was painted a cream colour and had cream coloured curtains and the colour made the room look very light and clean. There was some pictures on the wall which seemed a nice touch too, to make it feel a little more homely.

There was a flat screen tv on the desk, wonderfully positioned so that we could watch tv in bed! There was also a mini kettle, two cups and a selection of tea and coffee in the room, which was a nice touch as we definitely needed some coffee to get us going when we got up early the next morning.

The bed was really comfy and had a nice, firm mattress. The only problem I had with our nights sleep was that we could hear noise from the street outside as we were in our room which was a little annoying. Never the less we had a good nights sleep and were satisfied with the room.

The price we paid on line didn’t include breakfast, but breakfast is served at the hotel and costs around €7. We didn’t have breakfast so I can’t comment on that aspect of the hotel.

The hotel has 125 rooms which are a combination of single, double, twin or triple rooms. The hotel also has disabled facilities and the reception desk is open 24 hours. There is also Wifi available, but you have to pay for this and have your own computer with a wireless connection.

The hotel was fine, it was nothing more and nothing less than what I expected and it did the job. I’m glad we only stayed there one night as it is the kind of hotel you stay while just passing through, not really a hotel to have a holiday in.

Checking out was really easy, all we had to do was hand our key card in at the reception desk before 12pm. The hotel has a bus stop right outside which has buses that run straight to the centre of Dublin, which is really handy.

All in all this was a decent hotel to stay at and was clean and comfortable and a good price, I just wish that it had been a little closer to the airport!