Berghotel Astenkrone - Winterberg, Germany     

The hotel is full of old world charme, with heavy drapery, ornaments and lots of wood. We received a warm welcome and found all members of staff to be extremely friendly and well-trained. Service was absolutely perfect. The rooms are a bit old-fashioned but show only little signs of wear. Every area of the hotel is spotlessly clean, I believe I have never been to any hotel which was cleaner. The spa area is small, but nice, the size of the pool and the water temperature are ok. The saunas are only open in the afternoon or upon request, which I found a bit awkward on a rainy weekend. The hotel is very child-friendly, with nice linen on the kids' bed, kids' size bath robes, play corner, toys provided in the restaurant and a little welcome gift in the room. Two points which really turned us off: smoking is permitted in the public areas and the entire hotel literally STANK of smoke. The air was extremely bad. I am willing to accept cigarette smoke to a certain extend but this was far beyond acceptable levels. The second point was the relatively weak performance of the restaurant. Again, service was excellent, our table (we were there for a family reunion) had a lovely decoration, but the menue was very limited and the quality of the food was not convincing at all. The standard was rather that of a small town inn, not that of a 4* superior hotel. The overall impression of the hotel is good, though because of the bad air we would probably not go there again.