Hotel Europa City Vilnius - Vilnius, Lithuania     

What a disaster. I was with a friend in Vilnius to celebrate the New Year (which was fantastic). After spending two nights in Riga, we came down to Vilnius for three more. We arrived at the hotel at around 10pm. Nice staff, speedy check-in. I was bloody freezing so was desperate for a shower. The water was barely even lukewarm when set to maximum temperature. Great. After having an almost-cold shower we went down to the restaurant in the hotel for a dinner. We arrived too close to closing time to get everything we asked for (which was a lot) but that was not a problem at all. In the end we ordered a salmon salad, a herring salad, two soups, a selection of cheeses and a bottle of Chardonnay. The herring was nice; the salmon salad was disgusting. The salmon was virtually tasteless and quite unpleasant. You could tell it was of a crap quality and pulled straight out of a packet. I ate one piece. My friend tried a bit and spat it into a tissue. The bottle of Chardonnay was fine, though the waitress did not open the bottle in front of us. Cardinal sin. She should have also asked us to taste the wine to see if it was corked or not. Moving on.. The cheeses - worst seleciton of cheese on a plate I've ever seen in my life. there were four different types of cheese. I saw at least 7 slices of one type. It almost looked like the kind of cheese you get in little peel-packets to put in cheap burgers. Maybe it was. My friend had a fish soup which he thought had sand in it. This tasted fine to me, though. My soup was quite poor; it looked and tasted like it began life as a cheap powder sachet and had boiling water added to it. After that atrocity of a meal we went to bed, and returned in the morning for breakfast. Things could only get better, surely? WRONG! The breakfast was abysmal as well. Mass produced tripe. The fried egg was horrible, as were the shrivelled up little sausages. The diluted apple/orange juices were also gross. We didn't bother going to breakfast there again, even though it was included in price of our room. Also, in the three nights we were there, not once did we see the lights turned on for the stairs leading to the restaurant. Not once! At least the showers were piping hot in the morning. Our bedroom was small. I don't normally consider room size an issue worth mentioning as you shouldn't spend much time awake in your room, but our room was of a size where you couldn't walk around without having to sidestep your luggage. There are no irons in the room; less than two minutes after calling reception to request one was one at my door for me. The staff are good like that here. The management might want to get new covers for the ironing boards though. Stains and holes all over the shop. When it was time to check out, we went down stairs and did the usual stuff. The girl at the desk asked us if we had anything from the minibar, to which we replied no. We waited in reception as they called us a taxi. The girl told us that the maid who checked the room reported that we had had a large bottle of water from the minibar. We explained that we had bought drinks from Maxima (Tesco equivalent), including two large bottles of water that we had left in the room on the desk (a large bottle of water would not fit in the fridge anyway). The girl then said the maid told her a bottle of whisky was missing... we again told her we had brought our own refreshments and did not consume anything from the minibar. She said ok and we again sat down to wait for our taxi. Then the porter approaches us and asks if we can accompany him to the room to see what is supposed to be missing. We agree and walk to the lift; I glance at the receptionist and she is looking at me with her best 'you are guilty' face. To be frank I thought the entire thing was completely ridiculous - all the alcohol bottles in the minibar are tiny; the cost would have been peanuts. How they can seriously think we were trying to steal such things is beyond me. Anyway we go back to our room with the porter and he sees our two large bottles of water. He says there is a large bottle of Evian on every table in the hotel and we tell him there was no bottle of evian in our room. He can see we bought our own drinks (the bottles were only half empty to boot) so he informs an old woman who speaks no English and I only assume is in charge of stocking fridges and whatnot. She comes in our room and starts mumbling to him. My friend asks if the bottle of evian normally comes on a tray and the porter says yes. My friend points out that there is no such tray in our room so they must have forgotten to put the water in, unless they think we stole their tray. He talks to the old woman who is clearly [--] about us. She walks off to the lift area and the porter (who was quite nice about it all) basically says nevermind and sorry for the hold up. We walk to the lift and get in with the old woman. Then she gets out before the door closes. Strange... the location is on a motorway. You don't hear traffic or anything from your rooms and they are air conditioned. The location is away from everything and the main street with the shopping malls is about a 15 minute walk. Verdict: Pay a bit more for a hotel closer to old town. The hotel has no atmosphere and the food is horrifying. This is the first time I've rated a hotel 1/5. It was hovering around 2/3 but the minibar/watergate scandal took the biscuit.

C’est un excellent hôtel moderne. Bien équipé et chambres propres. Employés sympas et serviables, ils nous ont donné un plan et indiqué l’itinéraire à suivre pour aller dans la vieille ville et à tous les magasins (environ un quart d’heure à pied). L’intérieur de l’hôtel est décoré en tons neutres, avec beaucoup de tableaux aux murs dans les couloirs. Bon petit déjeuner avec beaucoup de choix, plats chauds, céréales, pain grillé et frais, fruits, thé, café et jus de fruits. Bref, c’est un excellent choix et le moins cher que j’aie pu trouver.