Hotel Bremer Haus - Bremen, Germany 

My partner and I went to Bremen from Edinburgh for two days using the new Ryanair service. We flew out on a Monday and returned on the Wednesday. Neither of us had been to this part of Germany before and we knew little about this old hanseatic port. The Market Square and the Schnoor were very special. These, and the other parts of the medieval city that survived Bomber Harris’s attention in World War II were picturesque, and we wondered what the city looked like in 1939. We had discovered our hotel, the Bremer Haus, on a web site and checked the reviews on Tripadvisor for it. It sounded promising, especially the price compared with other hotels near the station. The hotel is only 5 minutes walk from the train/bus station. Once we found the An der Weide, the hotel was easy to locate, being about 500 m from the station. The hotel reception area was being redecorated during our stay but it caused no inconvenience to us. The reception staff was very friendly and efficient and there was always someone on duty that spoke English. We were staying for two nights and we had rooms on the second floor. My partner smokes so we had a smoking room. The corridor was nicely decorated with new carpeting and modern lighting. The room was pleasant with a good view over the street. The d?cor was fresh. The en suite bathroom was standard although my partner liked the waffle towels. The TV channels in the rooms were in German apart from CNN news in English. The mini-bar was well stocked and reasonably priced. During the night, we left the window open. There was some street noise in the morning from about 6.00 onwards. This is not surprising as the An der Weide is a main street with cobbles and trams. As anyone from Edinburgh knows, traffic running over cobbles is louder that on tarmacadam. However the noise did not bother either of us sufficiently to get up to close the window! Breakfast was in the continental style with a wide range of items. There were four different yoghurts, two types of boiled egg, 5 and 10 minutes, various cold meats and cheeses and on the hotplate, Spanish Omelette, scrambled eggs and bacon. There were about ten types of teabag, four jams & marmalades, honey and other sticky stuff with several types of bread available. The breakfast rooms were well staffed. There were three waitresses on duty each day. There were two rooms, one for non-smokers and one for the polluting pariahs. We ate in the latter and were well pleased with the d?cor and the furniture but especially the ashtrays (or so the boss told me!). After breakfast, we left the hotel for the day. On our return we discovered that we had been transferred to an adjacent room as a problem had been discovered with the room window. This second room was much nicer than the first and the move demonstrated to us the standards of this hotel. Elsewhere, we have stayed in rooms with problems that were ignored. On our evenings we ate dinner in a local Indian restaurant on the An der Weide, called the Shanti. This is just around the corner from the hotel. We really liked the food here and we have placed a review of it on Tripadvisor. Our overall impressions of Bremen and the hotel are excellent. Bremen is a clean, prosperous city with a good variety of shops, cafes and quality street food vendors. We could not decide which of the many good beers was our favourite. So we have to return to taste them again. Where shall we stay when we go back? Have a guess!

Perfect for a weekend, close to the main train station and city center, clean, recently restored, good service, good breakfast, excellent quality/price ratio