Urside Hotel Shanghai — Hotel in Shanghai

i hate this place. A private room in the middle of shanghai for 25€ a night seemed like a good deal, especially with a discount on their well rated restaurant, it had the "China travel essentials" panda logo and the reviews from non-chinese people were good. So I booked 3 nights there. Upon arrival I already knew I was in for a bad time, the two receptionists didn't speak any english, didn't have any "translation tools", weren't prepared in any way to receive someone who didn't speak chinese and didn't make any effort to accomodate me, they gave me some kind of tea while they went through a long check-in process, i didn't like tea but i was thirsty so i asked for some water instead, the man told me he gave me water so i tasted it and this yellow-looking drink definitely wasn't water i tried asking again but he kept saying it was water, then he took me to my room and when i tried entering he started yelling at me in chinese, i was wondering if i did anything wrong but after i used a translator i realised he was just telling me the bathroom was outside. ok? that's what it said in the booking title 👍, apparently a 👍 wasn't the right answer because they kept expectantly staring at me, i started getting really uncomfortable so i just closed the door and finally unpacked but soon i realised that 1) there is no sound insulation and the noise of the music and ventilation is so loud that it's still clearly audible with the provided earplugs. 2) the room itself isn't ventilated, it's hot, dry, and smells of cleaning products, setting the fan and cooling to max level didn't do anything at all. the air ** so much moisture from me that i went through the single 360ml water bottle provided plus 1L of my own water through the night, i didn't figure out how to get more so i just left for the day thirsty and tired, i was so tired i didn't manage to do half of what i planned and when i got back i started a viscious cycle of spend more time in the room because i'm tired -＞ be sick and tired because i was in the room. The room gets throughly cleaned every day, even though i didn't put the "please clean" sign on the door, so the cleaning product smell got worse each day. As for the restaurant, the food is expensive even with the discount, it's not very copious and doesn't even look appetizing, so i didn't try it. So the most expensive nights of my stay in china ended up being by far the worst even compared to the two 6-bunk-beds/room 5€/night hostels i've been to. in hindsight i would have immediately switched to a real hotel even if i couldn't get my money back and it was more expensive or farther from the center. Also while there's english written everywhere it's purely for stylistic purpose and not to help foreign travellers, see the attached card (i still don't know what it says). Also one of the bathrooms contains the only water faucet i've seen in my life that had a hot-cold setting but no cold water, typically it's the warm water...

I had such a great stay at the Urside Hotel! So many thoughtful details that made the stay more special than your average hotel, this is a really cool and quirky boutique hotel in downtown Shanghai. It’s a little further out from the main city but is an easy walk to a subway station that takes you to every attraction you might want to see. The breakfast at the cafe was also great value for money and always creative and delicious. ||However the biggest compliment has to go to the fantastic staff especially Kai at the front desk! From the moment I arrived he made me feel super welcome and went out of his way to take the time to give me detailed instructions on how to get to the railway station for my overnight train, helped me print my tickets and photocopy all my visas and passport, he really went above and beyond to help me and even prepared me a delicious tea to take away when I checked out! Amazing service at an amazing hotel, I’ll...

A very modern and stylish hotel. We really liked the skylight in the room as well as the separate toilet and shower areas. The room also had many hooks for us to hang things which we thought helped a lot in organising our luggage. The lobby was really stylish and the beers and coffee that you are able to claim for free daily were delicious. The area around the hotel is also really cool. There are museums and I think a school but it is all very stylish and they look really pretty.The hotel is not really walking distance from any metro stations (in the winter) but if you have the Chinese apps, Alipay or Mei Tuan, you can book bicycle from right outside the hotel and cycle to the nearest Metro station about a six minute cycle. There are also not many food options nearby. There is however one 快餐店which opens late (11pm). I want to thank the staff at the lobby for entertaining our late checkout request because we had missed our train from...