Gdynia – Mercure Centrum
This subtle little hotel does somewhat dominate the area it’s in, with some cavernous public spaces. Another hotel in the Accor chain, indeed I’m not moving away from them on this trip, it’s a little higher up their hierarchy then my usual Ibis hotels.
The room, which was spacious and spotlessly clean. The hotel kindly upgraded me to a privilege room, located on the ninth floor of the building.
The decor was modern and contemporary, with this apparently being one of the room designs chosen by staff.
I’ve had worse views from a hotel room….
Ooooh, I love Nespresso machines. Not enough to actually pay for one myself, but I like it when other people or hotels have them. And, as another bonus, the staff were assiduous in their restocking of the room for the second night.
My welcome gift, a rather lovely local beer. A nice gesture, one I commend.
The downstairs bar area, spacious and clean.
My welcome drink of Żywiec, although they did offer an IPA from the barrel. In retrospect, I should probably have had the latter to show that hotels should do more beer such as this. One day there will be a dark beer to choose from, or something a little more unique. Anyway, the service at the bar was friendly and helpful.
The long corridors of the hotel. As for breakfast, I got lost walking around the ground floor looking for it. I gave up with looking for it and went to ask the staff member at reception. She seemed used to telling people where they’d hidden the breakfast room, and I don’t think anyone else noticed me walking around looking lost.
There were some hot options at breakfast that I wasn’t too engaged with, but the cold options were excellent and there was plenty of choice across numerous tables. I’d also like to apologise to the hotel, as they probably wondered where the meat on that front plate kept disappearing to. I might have become a little addicted to it as it almost melted in the mouth, one of the best cold cuts I’ve had. They kept bringing more out promptly though and didn’t seem to want to find the culprit.
A proper breakfast should be like this. Incidentally, I had another little emergency at the hotel breakfast at the fruit juice machine. Customers are meant to press the button once to get the drink, and I’m dead good at this now, having had the same machine at the last four hotels. Here though, on my second refill, the machine went a little berserk and didn’t stop pouring, disgorging gallons of apple juice everywhere. Admittedly the machine’s drip tray caught it all (I once flooded an airport lounge floor in India with about half a bag in box of Pepsi, so I appreciated the lack of flooding here), but probably around 20 or 30 litres went through, it was quite a sizeable loss, so I alerted a staff member. She was one of the few non-English speaking members of staff the hotel had and I didn’t know the Polish for “I’ve flooded your apple juice machine”, so by the time she came over to have a look the machine had stopped and she was none the wiser as to what I wanted. I think she just assumed the British aren’t quite with it, so I left it at that.
This is the height of sophistication as far as I’m concerned. I couldn’t find the butter, just pots of margarine and I don’t much like the taste of that. I then stumble (not literally) on this machine which is like a little piece of magic. You press the button and a perfectly formed circular disc of butter falls out of the bottom onto a plate. Quite magical and very delicious. No doubt all my posh friends are used to such technology, but I don’t get out much.
Part of the breakfast room, which was never that busy, so it remained a relaxed and comfortable environment.
As for the hotel generally, it was as near perfect as I could have wanted. The staff were friendly, the room was clean, there were no noise disturbances and I very much liked the view over the sea. The prices were also very reasonable, under £30 per night including breakfast. During the summer months, this is a much more popular hotel as the tourists flood in, so I imagine the prices are higher then. But, for the time I was there, admirable value for money.
