Hotel Las — Hotel in Piechowice

We booked a week at Hotel Las via groupon for about 160 zł/night for two people. This included breakfast and dinner/lunch (the main meal)||||Good points: location (for nature walks/hikes), food, staff, facilities||||Bad points: location (getting there without a car is tough), food choices if you are vegetarian and the bed||||Location: to get to this place by car should be easy enough. We came by train from Warsaw (took an Intercity Express to Wroclaw and then Kolej Dolno-Śląskie) -- I recommend taking the KD trains from Wroclaw to Piechowice. These are clean, air-conditioned and with a clean and big bathroom. AND cheaper than TLK.||From Piechowice, there are public buses (PKS) which will cost you 4zł per person -- it's cheaper if you take the private one (ro-ko buses), but it's difficult to find out when they travel. From the train station walk straight to the main road and turn left. There should be a bus stop there (check if you're heading in the right direction -- this should be to Szlarska Poreba). Or, you can take a taxi -- this should cost you 30 zł||Get off at Hotel Las (it's a bus stop)||||To get to the mountains -- you can walk up past the hotel's tennis court to a little leafy path and turn left. Then cross the road and you'll reach the paths (buy a tourist map that will show you hiking paths -- marked on trees etc by different colours) -- if you turn right there you will reach the Wodociag Szklarski (the Szklarski waterfall) or if you go further you can head up to the Sniezna Kotly mountain top. If you turn left you can walk to Piechowice (a 45 minute walk). ||||you can also take buses to Szklarska Poreba or Jelenia Gora.||||ROOM: the room we took was clean and nice. There was no balcony, but lots of windows and airy. The bathroom was small, with the shower cabin a bit too tiny to bend down, but that's as I am 6'1", so for smaller people like my wife it was ok. Compact, but clean and functional. They give soaps and towels, but better to be prepared with your own shower gell.||The bed -- ah, this was a bad point -- not comfortable.||||FOOD: traditional polish fare -- tasty, but can be heavy. Not much choice for vegetarians (since we aren't, this wasn't a problem for us :). Quite delicious -- nalesniki, lazanki, etc. A big plus to the continuous delicious tea.||||POOL/SAUNA/STEAM ROOM/JACUZZI: yes, for a three star hotel they have all of this -- the pool is about 4; deep (120 cm) and half olympic sized, so good for swim (if it isn't crowded). The steam room and sauna are very good and they have a jacuzzi as well. You will get pool towels from the lifeguards (yes they have life guards) and there is a children's pool.||they have changing areas and you can get a key to the lockers from the reception||||GAME ROOM: they have a larger game room with 4 billiard tables and 2 fusball tables and two table-hockey games. We really enjoyed the fusball.||||OTHER FACILITIES: they have a tennis court + basketball nets and they have a lily pond with a fountain.||They also have a massage area and a beautician, but we didn't use this, so can't comment||||STAFF: very friendly and accommodating, especially the reception staff and the housekeeping.||||Child friendly -- lots of things to do with the kids besides of course hiking/skiing||dog friendly -- they do allow dogs, but we didn't have our dog with us||||Wi-fi --on this I was very pleased - they have a fast and always on wi-fi network.||||Insect life: we had a lot of wasps in the room, but there were wasps everywhere this summer and the hotel is in the middle of nature, so you gotta expect these critters!||||Overall my wife and I enjoyed this place, it was relaxing and fun. It served our purpose well and I recommend this place to anyone looking to get away from it all...

Hotel Las is in a great location and it looks great from the outside. However on the inside it’s stuck in the 80’s. The reception is nice enough but the rooms are really basic and not welcoming at all. It looks like all the furniture is second-hand. The bed is not comfortable and the pillows are weird, not supportive at all. There’s no colour in the room or carpet to make it feel cosy which you need in the mountains on a rainy day like when we arrived. There is a TV and a fridge but no kettle which I found weird. I brought my own travel kettle. If they want to regain their fourth star, they really need to up their game when it comes to furnishing the rooms. The most worrying thing for me was that there didn’t seem to be any air vents/heating/aircon. So I doubt they use this room in the winter- well I hope not. To their credit when I asked for an electric heater because the room was freezing, they brought one straight away. I asked for two extra pillows but they only brought one. So you win some, you lose some. The breakfast was weird. I get that you’re in the middle of the Polish mountains but… if you want to make international guests happy and make them want to come back, you need to cater to them too. There weren’t very many options for people who aren’t familiar with Polish breakfast. They could have done with some pastries, cake, nice granola, etc. even the coffee machine only had one option: black coffee. And I didn’t see any variety of tea bags for us non-coffee drinkers. Luckily I brought my own. It’s little touches like this that I think would really improve the experience and would help them regain their fourth star. It’s barely a three star to be honest. The saving grace of the hotel is its pool and sauna which, when I went there, was functioning well and was clean. They even have a lifeguard which I was surprised at. The changing area is definitely decades old but with new lockers and some new tiling it would be good as new. Without the pool, the hotel is not great at all. This hotel has sooooo much potential to be that modern, mountain escape that we all crave. If only someone would invest some money into the place to make these changes. There are a lot of hotels in the area, even five star ones, so competition is fierce. This hotel can’t rely on just its location anymore. As it stands I wouldn’t recommend this place, you can get better service and comfort elsewhere. Las Hotel, please listen to customer reviews. We’re all saying...

quiet and tranquil place, very close to the mountain

good location for some of the hiking routes there. (The parking was will lit and always found a spot close to the reception.)

breakfast was good the staff is quite friendly and the service was fast

the mattress had a few dents and was quite unconfortable.

the view from our room was of a pond and some part of the mountain. Idyllic enough, if the pond would have been clean instead of having trash (beer cans, ... inside)

we paid the accommodation using my card which is in EUR. 95% of the times we use it with a different currency, we are asked if we want to pay in EUR or the local currency. This time there was no question and the hotel's bank did the conversion (using a fantastic exchange rate) and adding a foreign currency tax on this. The whole price ended up being around 10 % more expensive than in the reservation. if the staff would have warned us, we would have used an ATM and paid with cash.

the saunas could use a little refresh (and one a repair, since it was out of order)

the restaurant there only had a daily 3 - 4 course menus, so not something you can really eat when travelling with small kids. Hence we had to drive out for...