Grandior Prague - a fantastic hotel...

Some hotels are like the Tardis. From the outside they might share the road in which they are located with various stores and not really enjoy the luxury of a grand entrance, but once through the doors they open out like a huge canyon of glitz and glamour, mirrors and polished floors and occupy a vast space that goes back and back as far as the eye can see, but fail to offer any evidence of their size on the outside. If you took a walk around the block to check out the scale of the place from the outside you would find nothing to suggest that you hadn't been dreaming. 

View from room 512, Grandior Hotel

The Grandior Hotel in Prague is very much a Tardis. Once inside, you lose all sense of there being an outside world. You exist in another space all together and it's a great feeling. The streets and shops are gone and you find yourself in a corridor, passing numbered doors until you reach your own where you are plunged into a world within a world, your room, where silence reigns supreme, a made bed awaits your attention and a minibar too.

There was very little not to like at the Grandior Hotel. Great rooms, amazing food, fantastic hospitality all made my stay impeccable. The breakfasts were to die for: quark cakes for a start, poppy seed cakes, pastries, a variety of breads, hot and cold delights, cereals and yoghurts, a selection of teas, scrambled eggs, beans, bacon, sausages, roasted potatoes (yes, roasted potatoes), mushrooms, you name it. Lunches were good too and I'm guessing dinner was also top notch, but I never experienced it, much to my dismay.

Checking in and out was straightforward and the conference I was running went smoothly thanks to the hotel staff who pulled out all the stops, offering sweet and savoury snacks to delegates during the breaks and generally being there when called upon. 

Room 512, Grandior Hotel

I was staying in room 512 on the fifth floor. The bathroom was luxurious and my only complaint was the ferocity of the shower and the fact that I managed to soak everything as soon as I switched it on; it was so powerful, like a Karcher jet washer. I felt as if I was sand-blasting myself rather than having a warm, gentle shower. Sometimes I couldn't face it until after breakfast. That would be my only gripe, everything else was perfect.

I arrived on Monday 6th June and checked out on Friday 10th June and then flew home with easyJet, not British Airways. And you know what? The food offering was better and the flight too, it was smooth all the way, sunny with scattered cloud and we flew at 38,000 feet. I read Middle England by Jonathan Coe, sipped on a green tea and munched on a KitKat, that was lunch basically. It was good to be flying into Gatwick and not Heathrow. The former means that the plane runs just north of the south coast and then turns inland to touch down, there's no circling the airport half a dozen times before landing and once on the ground it's a short walk to the train station and regular trains into London. I was home by 1530hrs and sitting in the garden finishing off my book. The big question is what to read next.

No, I won't jump, I need breakfast!