The Hotel Ezüstpart is not the worst hotel I have ever stayed in. That place will forever be the government hotel in Yakutsk (northern Siberia, Russia) that I visited late in the spring of 1993. That hotel had limited heat, no food, no drinks and no other guests. We ate the two large salamis thoughtfully packed by my assistant before we flew away to Vladivostok the next day. There is a long story behind this, which I will tell some other time.
The Hotel Ezüstpart has some good things going for it. It is located right on the Silver Beach in Siófok (see the view from our balcony below). Siófok is the official summer capital of Hungary, where lots of people go for their extended summer holidays. See my next post on Lake Balaton in general.
There were, however, some things that just did not work at the hotel.
- The hotel was clearly built during the communist era out of pre-fabricated parts, like the ugly panel apartments that dot Eastern Europe. These parts more-or-less fit together in the final building.
- There was no coffee available for breakfast in the cafeteria, only chicory. I got used to this coffee substitute when I was living in Russia and had no other option. I remember stumbling on a can of Yuban coffee at a shopping center in Vladivostok at the time and thinking it was a gift from paradise.
- Real coffee is available in a small, closed shoplet next to the cafeteria. The only problem is that this is the only place where smoking was allowed in the hotel – and there are clouds of smoked tobacco so thick they show up on local weather radar – so it’s extremely unpleasant to take your coffee there.
- No Internet access of any sort available, no ice cubes for drinks anywhere and a host of other problems more associated with older, communist era establishments than with anything modern.
- Since it is located on the beach, there are frequent loud parties going on. Monday night, the Russian dance party at the hotel 100 meters away was so loud, we could not hear our TV show in the room even with the speakers located less than two feet away from us.
Now let me discuss the room.
- Pictured above is the entire room for all five members of our family. For the Steussy’s reading this blog, it is smaller than the utility room at 601.
- The lights would work every now and then. The shower nozzle had been “fixed” with duct tape and frequently leaked throughout the room.
- The balcony, while picturesque, is rusted with gratings spaced rather far apart. We were pretty sure Dan-dan would not fall through the cracks to his death six stories below, but we weren’t sure about Camilla. Aaron never left his crib to crawl freely around the room, as he surely could fit through the bars.
All of this might have been OK if we were roughing it at a campsite somewhere, saving money for our children’s college education, etc. But, at $129 per night, we weren’t exactly saving anything.
For reference, here is a partial list of hotels we have stayed at for less than $150 a night in the last few years:
- Hilton New York, Manhattan
- Bellagio Hotel, Las Vegas
- Luxor Hotel, Las Vegas
We came home two days early and collapsed in our apartment in Budapest, which suddenly seemed very large and luxurious. When we got back, we sat on the sofa, kids watched TV, I played Scrabble, Gabi helped me. We stayed there for quite some time, very happily.