View from the Room: AROK Hotel, Strasbourg
The location couldn’t have been better. We came from Paris and were going on to Zurich so being opposite the main station, especially in the furious heat of the summer is advantageous. Gone are the days when being near a station meant being in a less salubrious area.
The quirkiest of the three hotels on this trip, what the boutique-style Hotel AROK lacked in the room (working air con, drawers, coffee machine, kettle, fridge) it made up for with the complimentary coffee machine, cold drinking water from the bar and lots of seating and games in the lobby area.
In the same way the Red Lion (Coaching Inn) in St Ives had lion portraits on every wall, this one had a recurring theme fitting its AROK and Roll attitude’.
Like many, the building’s air-con found it hard to keep the building cool and the staff did their absolute best to make us comfortable. When it didn’t work, they agreed to place a fan in the room. However, it went to the wrong room, and at close to midnight, the duty manager managed to get hold of the guest in that room and retrieve it for us. Luckily they weren't using it.
The room itself is generally sized up as compact with a comfortable bed (bar the warmth) and the TV on the wall opposite. Rather wonderfully we were able to access quite a bit of the commonwealth games going on back home in Birmingham. We even enjoyed watching a bit on our phone in the bar whilst indulging in complementary drinks. We decided to have these pre dinner on our anniversary.
There’s a desk and comfy chair, an open wardrobe unit too.
I especially enjoyed the ‘parallel lines’ theme in the spacious bathroom. Here we had a decent sink with plenty of storage around it and underneath and an always good-to-see double loo roll holder (I don’t know why I have such a thing for it either). Not sure if I like the loo brush attached to it though. The good-sized bathtub had the all-important handheld shower and a towel rail with 2 large and 2 small towels.
There is a full-size shower gel and hand soap and that’s pretty much it for the bathroom other than 2 cups. So some substance but lots of style.
There is the usual safe and hairdryer.
The buffet breakfast is pretty good and I managed to have a slightly different one for each of our three mornings. Overall, a better than OK experience.
