Halfway down the Danube

The Aro Palace Hotel

The Aro Palace Hotel in Brasov is a a big old hotel built in 1939. Here are the good things about it:

1) The staff are unanimously friendly and helpful.

2) It has a great location just outside the city center, a few minutes' walk from the town square.

3) The exterior of the hotel has a rather charming '30s Art Deco look to it.

4) The rooms are quite large.

Unfortunately, the list ends there. The Aro Palace is overpriced. (I'm embarrassed to tell you what we paid, but it was way too much.) Several lights in the room didn't work. The toilet ran endlessly and then broke. The food was mediocre. The rooms appeared to have been designed for dwarves -- dwarves who liked lots of room, but dwarves. The shower couldn't be adjusted higher than about 1 meter 70 (5' 8") and the toilet was of that sort that leaves the knees a bit higher than the hips.

But those were trivial compared to the big complaint: the heat was off, and it stayed off all night. It was a very warm night for February in Transylvania, but it was February in Transylvania. And it got pretty damn cold in that room.

I was prepared to make a scene at the desk the next morning. But the staff were just so friendly and helpful -- again -- that when it came time, I couldn't. It's not their fault they inherited a junky building.

I do wish someone would reclassify the hotel, though. It claims four stars. Two would be more accurate, or one if they can't get the heat fixed.

I'd be less annoyed -- and I don't want to be annoyed; I don't want to be the sort of traveller who constantly complains -- if we weren't planning to go back there. I was hoping to find a nice place that we could return to again and again.

We did bring a couple of nice memories away. The two maids who fussed over David for ten minutes straight, for one. And the sight of the full moon from our window, setting over the mountains in the violet hour before dawn.

Still, if I want to shiver with cold while I'm watching the setting moon, I'll go camping. So, if anyone has any other suggestions for accommodation in the region, we're all ears.

Posted by douglas at February 9, 2004 05:09 PM