The Pad in Lapad (Hotels in Croatia)

Member Name: NCG1

Product:	Hotels in Croatia
Date:	05/07/02 (430 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good location, Near lots of nice restaurants, Comfy room

Disadvantages: Mediocre breakfast

Hotel Lapad is 20 minute bus ride from Dubrovnik old town, and opposite the major ferry terminal which serves the many islands scattered along the Croatian coast. It is close to the airport (about half an hour's drive - though it took us about an hour due to dropping *everyone* else off first) without being under the flight path.

The hotel itself is an interesting building. It starts with a reception/ office bit which is right on the main road. You go through this, then past the swimming pool and the glassed-in dining room, to another, bigger building. This is built on a hillside, which means that you have to go up, then along a corridor and up again, if you're staying on one of the higher floors. I think this would make access difficult for anyone with mobility problems, though there are lifts. The building itself is made of stone, which makes it nice and cool, and many of the rooms have views out over the harbour ('sea view' is stretching it a bit, in my opinion).

Our room (not the cheapest, because there weren't any left) had an en suite bathroom (fantastic shower, but no bath), air conditioning (not all the rooms have this), balcony with aforementioned not-quite-sea view, a satellite TV (very important for the World Cup) plus the usual furnishings. It was simple, but definitely big enough and very comfortable. The only disadvantage was that there wasn't anywhere to hang wet towels (beach ones, I mean, they replaced the hotel ones every day), so we spent the week finding new and unusual places for them (the dado rail turned out to be the best!).

The hotel has a bar and two restaurants. We didn't eat there (there's tons of nice, cheap restaurants about ten minutes amble away) but the bar was pleasant - outside under a canopy, with a view of the pool. We did eat breakfast at the hotel, and that was disappointing. It ws on the German model - bread, ham, cheese and a bit of fruit. Well, the bread
was stale one morning, the ham looked distinctly fatty and unappealing, the cheese I don't know about (I don't eat dairy products) and the one hot dish on offer each morning (bacon, little sausages, scrambled eggs etc) was generally lukewarm. Definitely not a good meal - I just stuck to bread and jam and coffee.

The hotel pool looks very pleasant, and is definitely big enough to do lengths in, though it seemed very under-used and most people lounged around it rather than actually getting in. I'm afraid I didn't try it (allergic to chlorine), but my boyfriend reports that the shallow end isn't that shallow, so it wouldn't be very good for small children, although I suspect that parents of older kids would fully approve of a pool they could keep an eye on from the bar. ;-)

The hotel website (http://dubrovnik.laus.hr/hotel/lapad/) says that it offers a boat service into Dubrovnik old town, but sadly that isn't the case. However, it is easy and cheap to get there by bus. The hotel does offer a boat trip to a beach each morning, returning at lunch time, though we didn't bother with this as the nearby town beach was very pleasant (though stony - for more on this see my op on Dubrovnik).

Overall, I would return to Hotel Lapad, but I wouldn't pay for breakfast. The location - right on the bus route to the old town, next to the water, ten minutes from a street full of nice restaurants - is good and the rooms are comfy and clean. Its a lot cheaper than staying in one of the two hotels right next to the old town - and anyway, both of them look like the monolith in 2001, ugh!

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