Best Western Hotel Ketterer - Stuttgart, Germany 

Although in one of the less exciting cities in Germany, the Hotel Ketterer is easily within 5 mins walk of Calvinstrasse where you have a great choice of bars (both traditional places for beers and also funky cocktail and wine bars) where you can sit outside (even in October) and restaurants where the prices are very cheap and the quality is surprisingly good. It's also located on the main shopping drag for those needing retail therapy. I was there on business and had been booked into a single room at around €80 Euro including breakfast...okay the room was more like an inside cabin on a Seafrance ferry than the usual 5* room I'm used to, but it's not pretending to be a 5* hotel and the bed (albeit a small single) was comfortable, the room was spotlessly clean, the bathroom was fine with a great shower and...well, it was okay - nothing to moan about. Breakfast was fine too - nice fresh breads and with an imaginative combination of what was available, I managed to prepare myself scrambled eggs with smoked salmon on poppy seed toast and orange juice - there's also cereals, fruits, loads of breads, great cheeses (if you like that sort of thing at 8am)...again, absolutely fine. Hotel was quiet and only a complete prude with a sheltered background would notice any "----" or 'adult bars'...the area is hardy a red light district, just a normal German city where these things are as common as shoe shops. Safe area, not seedy and perfect if you want to be in the city rather than on the outskirts like Singelfigen for once (where you may get plusher hotels but deadly quiet locations). So, not the Ritz, but not at all bad neither...oh and the staff are all friendly, with good English and very helpful.

Although it's on Marienstrasse, it's at the far end where the neighborhood falls off to sex shops and massage parlors. It gets kind of funky around there. It IS many buildings cobbled together to be one hotel (as one reviewer mentions), so you need to drop breadcrumbs to find your way back to the lobby. The lobby is small, but creatively decorated in modern reds. I don't know what one reviewer was referring to when he described it as a "traditional German hotel", because it seemed more like a substandard attempt at a western style hotel in my book. Our room was very large, but not airconditioned & it was hot in August. Leaving the windows open meant a mosquito swarm feasting on us during the night, due to the water pooling on the tar-roof outside our window. I'd say leave this one off your list. For the money you can do better.