Hotel Bellevue

“Not for fat people!”

Lindlar is a perfect spot to get away. Not very far from the A4 motorway, so Cologne is some 20-25 minutes away. The hotel though is a compromise in some ways. Very hospitable staff, very nice welcome yet the rooms are a challenge for anyone. Especially bit more fat people. The second floor is stra… more

Lindlar is a perfect spot to get away. Not very far from the A4 motorway, so Cologne is some 20-25 minutes away. The hotel though is a compromise in some ways. Very hospitable staff, very nice welcome yet the rooms are a challenge for anyone. Especially bit more fat people. The second floor is strange, you would guess the furniture is put there before the winding stairs... I hit once my head toward the ceiling as it was angled. The bathroom at the same time is quite as big as the room... so mixed feelings.

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“Not bad, but ...”

Great, quiet location, friendly and helpful owners, who love to chat. Negatives: 1. Booked ground floor apartment for a week. Wanted kitchen, and wife has issues with steep stairs (owners informed on booking). On arrival we were asked to move into an upstairs double room for two nights half way th… more

Great, quiet location, friendly and helpful owners, who love to chat. Negatives: 1. Booked ground floor apartment for a week. Wanted kitchen, and wife has issues with steep stairs (owners informed on booking). On arrival we were asked to move into an upstairs double room for two nights half way through the booked week. Maybe we should have put our foot down, but felt that they weren't asking but telling us to move. Reason given for moving us: business partner who had inquired, but not booked, had now announced his arrival with 4 people, so they needed the extra bed space in the unused room of our apartment. Owners did move all our luggage up and down again. Effect of having to shift: a) wife did not leave upstairs room until the day we moved back down so that she didn't have to do the stairs (only went up once, and down once). b) When owners moved our gear, they moved our freezer food into fridge upstairs, which did not have a freezer compartment. We were not told about this. In addition, fridge was kept on warmest setting, so when we got home at night the frozen stuff had thawed. Owner response was that it would keep for a while being defrosted. Ah, nice; if we wanted to cook fresh food quickly we would have bought some! Of course, we couldn't cook it anyway - no kitchen upstairs! Two nights later when we were back in the apartment, it had all gone off !!!!! c) We couldn't just unpack and relax. As all gear had to be moved twice during stay, we felt compelled to keep living out of the suitcases. 2. Apartment seemed unfinished. No blinds or curtains in main room, very small kettle (travel size), almost no pots/pans/etc to make use of the "full kitchen". Since our frozen stuff had all gone too, we ended up ordering in or going out. 3. Lots of cable TV stations, but no instructions which station was on which of the 200+ channels the TV had. Noted down some, gave up after switching through 100, watched movies on our laptop. 4. No proper instructions on how to operate the central heating. After two days of dealing with a cold hall and cold bathroom, we discovered that the central heating boiler shuts down when the thermostat in the main room reaches temperature. For proper heating we had to leave the doors between main room and hall, and bath and hall open all the time! Wish we had been told this on arrival. Still means that you can't have the bathroom extra warm though. 5. Upstairs double room was TOO small for two people with two suitcases. We had to constantly step over our gear. Small wardrobe too thin to hold coat hangers properly, door only closes when hangers are twisted by ~45 degrees. Room only good for short-stay business travel with no large luggage. Not well noise-insulated. One night there were noisy arrivals @ 3am. Woke me up, and I could hear every footstep as well as every word spoken in the small common area. 6. Owner refused to give discount for moving us to double room, because: a) We had agreed to move. b) We had already been given a cheaper rate than advertised. Our issues with this: We didn't feel like we had a choice. Double room rate is lower than apartment rate. That "cheaper deal" had been offered when we BOOKED and was for ONE WEEK in the APARTMENT, moving was not part of this deal. According to the local hotel laws, they didn't provide service as booked and should have compensated for this. However, who is going to sue when you're not in the country for long? 7. Free wifi internet was very intermittent in apartment even when laptop/phone were stationary. Overall, it wasn't a bad stay, but our enjoyment was considerably dented. We had the impression the guest-room business is not getting as much attention as their other business ventures. Also, in conversation the owner mentioned that the place is within the blasting radius of the local rock quarry, and can shake quite a bit when they are blasting. They weren't blasting when we were there, but nobody made us aware of the possibility on arrival. Would I recommend this place? Yes, but with a caution to not get sucked in by the genuine niceness of the owners if they're not living up to what you booked.

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