Great place, but you need good walking shoes (Hotels in Cologne)

Member Name: HelenHancox

Product:	Hotels in Cologne
Date:	09/07/02 (172 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: luxury, swimming pool, known brand

Disadvantages: a little far from the centre

When I do my many trips to Germany (usually 3 nights somewhere that a cheap flight goes to) I spend my money on the hotel. I feel that a holiday deserves luxurious surroundings - thus I stay at the Hilton in Berlin, the Radisson SAS in Lübeck, and in Cologne I stayed at the Crowne Plaza.

Why? Well, a lot of these hotels are for businesspeople. Consequently out of busy business season you can get pretty good prices (especially through Internet booking). Husband and I had a twin room (twin double beds indeed) with huge buffet breakfast for about £100 per night. Can't go wrong!

The Crowne Plaza is situated on the main ring road (the Habsburgerring) which circles the town centre. The location is OK, although if you want to walk to the cathedral it's 10-15 minutes so you'll need good shoes! This meant that when we arrived in the town centre from the airport on the bus, we had to drag our suitcases over a lot of cobbles. I suppose sensible people would take a taxi, but I like to walk over the town and get a feel for it.

Facilities in the hotel are what you would expect - small swimming pool, great buffet breakfast, en-suite rooms - you know the drill. It's a tall thin building - like a NICE biscuit on its side - so the views from the upper rooms can be good. There was plenty of room to hang and store my clothing (considering it's primarily a businessperson's hotel) and there was a desk that you could work at acceptably, if that was what you were there for.

The whole of the ground floor is a large lobby area with comfortable seating - I quite enjoyed sitting down there to read from time to time. There is a drinks service there as well (there wasn't a kettle in the room, although there was a minibar. We British do like our cups of tea!)

There is at least one restaurant at the Crowne Plaza, but we found it difficult to find 'real German food' in the environs. If we'd wanted to ea
t Italian no problem; there was even a texmex over the road - but we only managed to find one German pub that served food without walking quite a long way. I suppose that's the international nature of cities having its effect.

The Crowne Plaza was a good base for exploring Cologne, bearing in mind I'm a good walker. The 10-15 minute walk to get to the centre of things could put people off. There is a tram stop right outside the hotel but I'm not entirely sure where it went (I used it to go to Bensberg, my birthplace, but didn't see where else it went).

Overall, my experience there was very good. And I felt the price was well worth it for the good comfortable surroundings and excellent breakfast (the waffles/pancakes were great!)

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