Denmark Copenhagen Mermaid Hotel

[WillTravel]

We stayed here for six days in July 2003. This is a Le Meridien hotel, and is rated 3*. However, the affiliation appears to be rather loose, and many people might argue with the rating.

Plusses:

* Excellent location. This is as about as central as you can get. We walked everywhere. The street itself is nice.

* Excellent breakfast buffet. This is included, and given the prices of restaurants in Scandinavia, it is a terrific value.

* Nice public areas.

* Nice staff.

We were assigned a 2-twin-bed room, as I wanted. The lounge downstairs is pleasant, and plays CNN during the day (also available on the TV in the room, which has a bunch of different channels).

Minuses:

These drawbacks did not bother us. We were just thrilled to have a hotel room in the center of Copenhagen. But I am posting them in case they bother other people. I think this hotel is an excellent value, but you can't expect a modern American-quality room.

* Church bells ring nearby between 8 AM and midnight, every 15 minutes. We rarely went to sleep before midnight, and the bells never woke us up, and we liked hearing them during the day.

* Bathroom has a typical Scandinavian shower configuration. I'd suggest keeping everything outside the bathroom, as the water will spray everywhere. The shower curtain does not actually block any water. The bathroom is small. The whole look is rather primitive. I have photos, because I thought it was so remarkable :).

* No voice mail, although the staff takes messages.

* No air-conditioning - but we would not expect it anyway. At that time, the tragic heat wave of 2003 had not really started, so we weren't bothered by the lack of air conditioning.

* We got a room next to the small, ancient lift, which creaked quite a bit. Maybe this is the room they give to Priceline customers. But it never stopped us from sleeping.

* Lack of storage space (no dressers) and the small closet is musty. We just opened our suitcases and took stuff from there.

* The rooms were definitely on the small side, but as expected for Europe, I would say.

Realistically, every hotel I have ever stayed at in the US or Canada has nicer bathrooms than this one did. (But the bathroom in the Aarhus hostel was a notch below it :)).

I could see that the rooms were supposed to be very nice, but the glamour had faded somewhat.

Bottom line, though, we were totally happy staying here, and would so again.