St. Andrews Palace, Warsaw **
ul. Chmielna 30, Warsaw
Stayed Dec. 9-12.
First impressions count, but don't last with this residence. You enter a large and very nicely restored courtyard with a Café at the end. The courtyard ends in a relatively quiet dead-end street. Cars can drive here, but since there are lots of pedestrians, they do so very slowly. "Great", you think - "it's going to be nice and quiet". Wrong.
A courtyard setting like this works almost like a cave - any and all sound seems amplified and multiplied (echoes). All the windows of the apartment I had (No. 6) were to the courtyard, and boy is it noisy! From people having a good time in the smoker's tent of a bar around the corner to folks dragging suitcases in at 5AM, coming back from - apparently - heavy drinking bouts at 3AM in mid-sized groups and probably smoking one last cigarette while jabbering away, to people rolling in large something-or-others (garbage containers?) at 6AM - you'll hear it all in Dolby surround!
Add to that the incredibly horrid sound dampening quality of the ceiling - I actually heard the mobile phone of the folks above me vibrate - and of course, them stamping towards it. The first night, they continually re-arranged furniture (at least that is what it sounded like) only to go on an artistic spree lasting about two hours on the bed right above mine. On the third evening (when I was up quite late working), I heard massive movement of furniture not from above but from the long wall that ran along the left side of the apartment. My guess is that there is a restaurant behind that wall and they were moving tables and chairs for the next day.
Needless to say, I ended up sleeping with ear plugs the remaining time.
The apartment itself is quite spacious, there is a relatively large kitchen that - while offering four cups, three saucers, silverware and a cooking pot - offers no glasses or plates that you could use to eat and drink with. A little strange, that. It did have a large refrigerator (what on earth for?) that squeaked continuously. And you're wondering where climate change is coming from. I turned the thing off to save power and my sanity.
The apartment is clean and in good enough condition, with some wear and tear here and there that isn't really an issue. The bathroom is spacious enough, though the shower has a very difficult to regulate, manual "mixer tap" and spews water not in a regular shower spray but rather in a few copious streams going in several directions. I never hit the right temperature during my stay, though - to be fair - I never got scolded or frozen, either.
The door, by the way, will not be a way a potential thief will get in - it is apparently made of steel and has a lock usually found on a bank safe, with claws leveraging into the door frame with every turn of the key (and you get quite a few turns, if you like). The key also reminded me of a safe key (I used to have one), but it was rather difficult to handle, since you have to insert it just the right way. Since even the lady at reception had issues getting it in the door, I didn't feel quite so bad.
The place got snugly warm even though the outside temperatures were quite miserable, though it was warmer in the living room than in the bathroom, which sported a radiator of the type I've never seen before - quite exotic, but likely just too small to heat the bathroom properly.
All in all, the noise situation from next door, above and the courtyard make St. Andrews Palace completely unacceptable to me. If you're used to sleeping in a dorm, you'll probably be ok - or if you tend to sleep with earplugs in (and like it) anyway. The location is quite good - you're not far from the central underground station, from shopping (which tends to be completely unattractive to me, since it's the same stores I get where I live - at the same prices) and lots of cafés and restaurants, though all of them are rather expensive, with pricing very near that of western Europe. You can eat and drink for very little in Poland, but not in this area.
Stayed Dec. 9-12.
First impressions count, but don't last with this residence. You enter a large and very nicely restored courtyard with a Café at the end. The courtyard ends in a relatively quiet dead-end street. Cars can drive here, but since there are lots of pedestrians, they do so very slowly. "Great", you think - "it's going to be nice and quiet". Wrong.
A courtyard setting like this works almost like a cave - any and all sound seems amplified and multiplied (echoes). All the windows of the apartment I had (No. 6) were to the courtyard, and boy is it noisy! From people having a good time in the smoker's tent of a bar around the corner to folks dragging suitcases in at 5AM, coming back from - apparently - heavy drinking bouts at 3AM in mid-sized groups and probably smoking one last cigarette while jabbering away, to people rolling in large something-or-others (garbage containers?) at 6AM - you'll hear it all in Dolby surround!
Add to that the incredibly horrid sound dampening quality of the ceiling - I actually heard the mobile phone of the folks above me vibrate - and of course, them stamping towards it. The first night, they continually re-arranged furniture (at least that is what it sounded like) only to go on an artistic spree lasting about two hours on the bed right above mine. On the third evening (when I was up quite late working), I heard massive movement of furniture not from above but from the long wall that ran along the left side of the apartment. My guess is that there is a restaurant behind that wall and they were moving tables and chairs for the next day.
Needless to say, I ended up sleeping with ear plugs the remaining time.
The apartment itself is quite spacious, there is a relatively large kitchen that - while offering four cups, three saucers, silverware and a cooking pot - offers no glasses or plates that you could use to eat and drink with. A little strange, that. It did have a large refrigerator (what on earth for?) that squeaked continuously. And you're wondering where climate change is coming from. I turned the thing off to save power and my sanity.
The apartment is clean and in good enough condition, with some wear and tear here and there that isn't really an issue. The bathroom is spacious enough, though the shower has a very difficult to regulate, manual "mixer tap" and spews water not in a regular shower spray but rather in a few copious streams going in several directions. I never hit the right temperature during my stay, though - to be fair - I never got scolded or frozen, either.
The door, by the way, will not be a way a potential thief will get in - it is apparently made of steel and has a lock usually found on a bank safe, with claws leveraging into the door frame with every turn of the key (and you get quite a few turns, if you like). The key also reminded me of a safe key (I used to have one), but it was rather difficult to handle, since you have to insert it just the right way. Since even the lady at reception had issues getting it in the door, I didn't feel quite so bad.
The place got snugly warm even though the outside temperatures were quite miserable, though it was warmer in the living room than in the bathroom, which sported a radiator of the type I've never seen before - quite exotic, but likely just too small to heat the bathroom properly.
All in all, the noise situation from next door, above and the courtyard make St. Andrews Palace completely unacceptable to me. If you're used to sleeping in a dorm, you'll probably be ok - or if you tend to sleep with earplugs in (and like it) anyway. The location is quite good - you're not far from the central underground station, from shopping (which tends to be completely unattractive to me, since it's the same stores I get where I live - at the same prices) and lots of cafés and restaurants, though all of them are rather expensive, with pricing very near that of western Europe. You can eat and drink for very little in Poland, but not in this area.
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