Hotel Ansgar, Copenhagen **

Hotel Ansgar is located one street parallel to the rear of the central train station. If you stay there and come by train (from the airport, for example), you should know that there is a small and easily overlooked exit on that side of the station (by the luggage storage lockers) that will save you a lot of time and effort, dragging your luggage from the main exit all around the station to the hotel...

The hotel is quite okay, the rooms are tiny, however. I had a room with two single beds, quite obviously a double room. If the single bed rooms are any smaller, then they need to start measuring their guests to make sure you fit. Oddly enough, the room had a single, tiny desk crammed between the bathroom and one of the beds, but two chairs, stacked on top of one another.

Obviously, one can’t sit down this way, but I barely found room to put the second chair. I can’t, by the life of me, imagine two people staying in the room, each using a chair. Whatever.

My room was towards the street. Normally, this shouldn’t be a problem as there is very little traffic. Unfortunately - and of course one can’t blame the hotel for this - there is a large construction site within the house next door. I was up early anyway, but it would not have been possible to sleep past 7:30 AM. Or have a normal conversation for that matter.

The hotel is rated three stars, though by the life of me I can’t imagine what they are for. Of course, star ratings change from country to country, so perhaps one of the stars is for the elevator. This is quite a curious construction, as the doors for each floor are always offset by half a floor. I.e. you have to go up stairs to get to the elevator in the first place, and either go up or down stairs depending on wether you hit the button for your own floor or the one above it. Quite annoying if you have a lot, or heavy luggage, I would think.

Breakfast was okay, though the swaying floor of the breakfast room really psyched me out - I felt like my chair / table was on a waterbed. Whenever someone would walk to or from the buffet, things would start to shake.

I’ve seen worse hotels, I’ve seen better hotels. The price was - for Copenhagen center - quite okay with €85 including breakfast.
Comments

Carlton Hotel Guldsmeden, Copenhagen **

I booked this hotel on HRS because it had a very high user rating, and because it was reasonably priced (considering how expensive Copenhagen is).

After booking, I checked into TripAdvisor on it - and was disconcerted by some of the entries. At that point, however, there was no going back (prepaid). Some people absolutely loved the hotel on that site, some found it to be horrible.

The most important thing to know: it apparently has nothing to do with what the frequent business traveller would normally associate with the name „Carlton”. The hotel operator is Guldsmeden; they operate other „different” hotels in Denmark, as well as on the Côte d’Azur and - of all places - Bali. Sounds to me like a financially independent whose hobby is small, private hotels.

The location is quite ok, it isn’t far (walking distance) from the „hip” places in Copenhagen and it is just down the road from Central station (I walked to the hotel from there with a big suitcase and a laptop backpack).

The room I had was 150, just under the roof and right next to the elevator (which, albeit, opens to the other side). Luckily, my initial tingling of fear (I’ve had some horrific room-next-to-elevator experiences) was unnecessary: I heard nothing of the elevator at all - in fact the room was very quiet in general.

It was clean, but really quite small. The angle of the ceiling (i.e. the roofline) didn’t help. It didn’t have a closet of any kind, so my clothes hung „in the open” on hangers suspended form hooks in the wall opposite the (small) bathroom.
Neither did it have much drawer space, making me deposit my socks and underwear in the small drawer of the bedside table and my folded garments (t-shirts, etc.) on top of the minibar cabinet. I personally prefer to have my clothes out of the way (of dust and prodding eyes), but that may be a personal paranoia.

The hotel offers everything as „biological”: the breakfast, the beers and - believe it or not - the shampoo / soap. I tried the beer (free „welcome” glass) which was good (but not extraordinary) as well as the shampoo and soap. Besides a very unusual (sticky) consistency, I didn’t lose and hair (or grow it in places I didn’t want), nor did I get a rash, so it seems to be ok.
Comments