Hotel Central - Bucharest, Romania     

The Hotel is not cheap at $185/night. We should have suspected something wasn't right immediatly as we went down the hall to our room upon arrival. The carpeting was very worn and stained. The walls had luggage marks that could have been years old. The room had old worn carpets with food crumbs along the edges. The beds were old and in need of new mattresses. You could feel the springs through the mattress padding it was so thin. The linens wouldn't cover the mattresses. The bathroom was old with a shower that had mold in the grout. We asked to move to a different room. The new room was not much better. In fact the mattresses were worse. They were so old that they had no shape to them. They just layed on the bed limp! The towels were thin, the shower again had mold and there were chips in the shower pan. The a/c was up on the wall beneath the ceiling but had a remote control. It took us quite awhile to realize that you had to aim the remote exactly at the a/c in order to control it. We baked for some time before we figured that out. The bed cover had a hole in it about 4inches by 2inches. And, if you can believe it so did one of the towels. I have photos to prove it. (Although I cannot download them to this computer which is in our hotel in Budapest). The hallways were noisy. Although the hotel does have a good central location for walking tours, the only bright spot for the hotel itself was the breakfast area which was at least clean and the food acceptable. The staff also tried their best but had a lousy facility to operate. Someone is making a lot of money and not spending anything on maintenance. Even our tour guide said that the hotel had a reputation for high prices and poor quality. There must be better places to stay in Bucharest. If this is even rated as a single star don't trust any rating for this city and skip Bucharest altogether.