Rhapsody Hotel — Hotel in округ № 78

I chose Rapsodiya because of its location, right in the heart of Nevski Prospect, along the canal, two blocks behind Kazan Cathedral. The entrance is through some gates into a courtyard. You have to ring the buzzer at night as they lock the gate after around six. The reception staff is available 24/7. It is a relatively small hotel, only two floors, with a small reception area. For just a bit more than the standard price, I ordered a suite and my daily room rate (in USD) was about $75 per night. The suite was huge and kept very clean. The decor was dated, but fine. Internet was fast and reliable. There was a small refrigerator and a nice writing desk. The shower (no bath) had a light inside, a radio, and had spa jets (you need to make sure the jets are not on when you first turn the shower on!).||The reception staff was very, very nice and helpful. They were able to direct me to a fitness club (only 2 blocks away), help me find metro stops for places I needed to go, a good hair salon to get a haircut, and a place to get my clothes washed (only around $4 for them to wash and dry a full load). While I speak Russian, their English was good. You have access to everything in the city: The Hermitage, Church of Spilled Blood, the Neva River, many fine restaurants, and several metro lines, all within a few hundred metres. The clientele is mostly Russian, but I met foreign guests here as well, an Australian couple, a woman from France, and another from Germany. I stayed here for 11 nights so I think I had a good opportunity to find problems....and there were none. The breakfast was adequate, but nothing special (boiled or fried eggs on alternate days, tomatoes, cucumbers, sliced cheese and meat, kasha, coffee, tea, cereal, and breaded chicken nuggets, and noodles). In short, highly recommended, but...

Really I am travelling to Saint Petersburg several times a week and it seems I found the hotel to stay in. Placed in the historical centre of the city this hotel is very pretty place to stay. I spend a week there and I surely would like to return. It was very friendly atmosphere from the young and very helpful stuff. I took a double room to have a big bed, though in a single number I found a very good bed too. It is very easy to reach the most attractions of the city by foot from the place. And it is just near Nevsky prospect the most famous street in the city. Though you will not hear the big city from your room - the hotel is on the quite little street. The price of the staying is very affordable - though you must understand you cannot have breakfast like in the big hotels for this very humble price. Breakfast is simple, but not bad, even they placed a coffee machine in the breakfast area. But if you want something more you can easily use thousands of nearby cafe and restaurants. ||It is very clean in the hotel. Every day they make a room service and it is a real pleasure to return there. ||So I will recommend this place and I am surely want to return there. ||My only advice to stuff - place some kind of mat to put shoes after snowy...

Pros:||• Room was a good size, clean and comfortable||• Communal areas clean and comfortable||• Excellent location (St. Petersburg is huge so you can't be central to all of it)||• Breakfast basic but adequate||• Good, free Wi-Fi||• Hotel nice and quite (although mine was a mid-week stay)||Cons:||• No English channels on TV (not the end of the world but would have been handy for a least one English speaking news channel, even RT!)||• A bit of confusion/delay arose at checkout over payment process and taxi arrangements (the poor lass seemed new to the job, hardly speaking a word of English and my Russian is non-existent)||Other observations:||• Hotel entrance is tucked away behind the back of the building, via a gated alleyway off the main road||• Taxi booked via hotel for airport was 800R, which seemed to be a fair going rate (although the taxi driver “tried it on a bit” by conveniently not having change for my 1,000R note)||• Just making people aware that, in general, there is little English spoken in St. Petersburg and the written language is Cyrillic. These factors make getting around more difficult than say a typical European city (fortunately, I had the companionship of a Russian speaking pal for...