Звезда — Hotel in Irkutsk

Goodies:||- a separate aircon that works well. Heats up fast, cools down even faster. Does not require the window to be closed||- breakfast to your room. Neat when you don't have time to go downstairs in the morning and make a whole process out of food consumption||- 24/7 bar with snacks. Convenient when you arrive/ leave really late and need that bit of food past midnight. Also sell cigarettes there, heads up!||- really friendly stuff in this all night cafe. Smiling, willing to help. Can't do better||- I suppose it's a worldwide standard now, but they do provide you with a half a litre bottle of still water every day. Nothing special here||||Bads:||The major thing is the mattress - it felt old. I normally sleep with a pillow, but had to throw it aside to compensate the hight difference between my body and my head - that's how old it was. Just to notice, I've never had a problem with a mattress before, so this definitely needs a fix.||||Minor:||- slow wifi. I mean really slow. I'm not talking watch a youtube slow rather load an image slow||- terrible shampoo. I couldn't figure out where it was at first (dispenser like for a hand soap on the wall). I literally had to put two palms of my hand full with this on my hair to get anywhere further than rinsing my head with water. I don't have the shortest hair on earth but it normally takes a simple squeeze of a shampoo bottle||- hairdryer. I guess everyone is used to hotel dryers being terrible but this one falls within a category "oh, it's actually working, can't feel it"||- takeaway coffee. Don't. Take. It. The coffee is fair, quite good for a northern middle of nowhere actually, but the cups! It felt like the cup is from one place and the lid is from the other. It's covers the cup but doesn't hold on it. Result? My shirt and a seat in a cab covered with boiling hot coffee. I would think this is a one-off thing, but a colleague told me same happened to him a month or so ago. So it's persistent...

We stayed for one night to relax after a series of sleeper trains and hostels, hoping to use the restaurant, banya and computer/internet facilities in a nice setting. ||Upon arrival it appeared that our booking (through Hotels.com on the same day) had not come through, but luckily we were given the room we had requested.||The hotel itself is located a fair way out of town and in a grotty area, but it is nicely decorated and the rooms are comfortable and clean with good provisions. The buffet breakfast was good and the staff were generally helpful and spoke enough English to get by. ||We ate at the Chinese restaurant; nicely decorated and good service, but the food was very greasy and we were surprised there was no English translation of the menu for international guests.||The banya turned out to be an additional expense not included in the room booking. It was well presented and had everything you need (except birch leaves and tea/snacks as you might expect traditionally in Russia). The small plunge pool was suitably cold however the main pool was freezing cold meaning it was sadly very hard to make use of! We were not sure if this was intentional, but it was not what we expected and staff did not understand our query. ||We wanted to use the business centre computer however when we came to use it the wifi would not work and staff did not know how to fix it. This was especially frustrating as we had specifically emailed prior to booking to check this would be possible to use.||Overall we had a ok experience despite the various niggles/shortcomings, it just wasn't the international business standard we had been looking for on...

This was quite a disappointing hotel for the money paid. The room itself was impressive looking, with a good sized bed (although not long), sofa and large bathroom. The hotel is not at all close to the city centre (a one hour walk), but is very well positioned for the airport. However, look beyond these points and the experience we had just didn't make it worth the money. On the first night, we arrived late on the train (9:30) and after a quick freshen up, we were shown to a table in the Chinese restaurant. After trying to attract the attention of the waiting staff for ten minutes, we were then told that the restaurant was actually closed. As always, the staff were very nice and we were shown to the other restaurant, but it was not really what we wanted. We ate in the Chinese restaurant on the second night and it was good. Breakfast is served in the restaurant and the staff were very pleasant, but because of two large parties of Chinese tourists, the food was probably best described as 'remains'. The fact that we were drinking orange juice out of coffee cups on the first morning gives you an idea of how overrun they had been! Then there was the issue with housekeeping which meant our room was forgotten by them completely. On the second day, we just asked for new towels and water from reception after the room was not made up, but to forget to clean the room the following day as well was amazing! ||So, overall things just didn't go well. Maybe we were...