Hotel St. Barbara - Tallinn, Estonia     

having booked the hotel, I read the reviews. I know, it is a back to front way and silly. my heart sank as many wrote about the noise of the nightclub right in front of the hotel. nearly cancelled it but the manager wrote a welcome letter and promptly promised to give us the back/ quiet room. we arrived very early by train from st petersburg, and found the hotel easily, by tram from the station. we were offered a bigger family room at the front and was told we can change to the back later on if we wanted. we were also given a very late check out on the day we left with no extra charge. maybe because it was winter, and off season, but we did not see any nightclub(?) let alone heard it. the hotel is reasonable, clean, and the location is very near the old town (just accross the square) where all the restaurants are located. one note: the german restaurant at the basement is closed on sundays, so no breakfast ! the coffee machine at the lobby was out of order too, so it was a draw back as there is no kettle in the room either. when we came down for dinner on monday, the restaurant was closed for a private function. no warning either. breakfast is plentiful if monotonous. overall, for the price it is a good hotel to stay in tallinn.

I reserved the hotel by an online website and was quoted a price of 70 Euro per night so I thought fair enough. Rooms were very basic but very very hot at night (surprising for the Baltics)! Breakfast was great with plenty on offer but the girl who was serving started clearing the breakfast away at ten minutes to ten (breakfast was due to finish at ten) she also made it plainly obvious that no one was welcome in the dining room at this time! finally when I went to pay the credit card machine did not accept any of my cards. I had noticed that this had also happened to other guests earlier in the day when I had been in the lobby. There was obviously a major problem with the machine but it had not been sorted!! The receptionist told me that I could pay the bill in Euros as opposed to Estonian Krooni. So when I handed over 70 Euros I was told that this was not enough and I would have to change my Euros to Krooni before I could pay. The hotel rate meant that I would have lost over 10 Euro on this and I was forced to go out looking for a bank machine on the last day of my holiday! All in all an inconvenience. I travelled the Baltic countries for over a week and had a great experience in all the other hotels. This one however was not great at all!