We wanted to spend the night in Lindau or Konstanz, but our budget wouldn't allow us to do so…read more Luckily I found the this hotel that just barely squeaked by for our budget (being anywhere close to the Bodensee is expensive, I found). We paid 78 euros for a double room with in-room shower.
We arrived around 7 pm. There were many folks checking in, and I remembered very quickly from high school German classes that Austrian German is a wee bit different than what I learned in school! Luckily I was able to observed a few interactions while waiting to boost my confidence. At the desk, we were able to quickly sign in and gain our room key. We found that our room was not in the hotel itself, but in their guesthouse a few blocks down. I wasn't sure that I fully understood the directions, so I asked for the desk person to draw it out on a map (which he very kindly did).
Instead of going straight to the room, we decided to stop and have dinner at the restaurant at the hotel. Surprisingly, it turned out to be one of our better meals from our trip! After spending about 10 minutes figuring out the menu. our waiter informed us that they were out of almost everything due to a large tour bus group (or at least that's what I think he said). No worries...we ended up with some of the most delicious schnitzel I've ever had! With two cokes, our bill was around 25 euros. I felt a bit sorry for our waiter because I believe he thought we were a little slow mentally, when in reality, I was just struggling to keep up with soupy Austrian German.
By the time we were done, it had gotten dark. The area near the guesthouse is not very well lit, but luckily, we were able to find it on the second loop. We had room 11 on the top floor (2 flights of stairs). It was very clean and the wood furniture seemed very new. The bathroom was a bit old and needed a good scrubbing, but it was fine for a night. There was a very old TV, but it worked. The room was quiet and we slept well.
Breakfast the next morning was just okay. The orange juice was the worst we had this trip, but the selection of breakfast items was good (many breads, cheeses, meats)...coffee had milk and cream. We checked out very quickly and were on our way. In hopes of not getting linguistically confused, we just paid with cash (though they do accept credit cards, unlike some other budget properties we visited).
The only real downside is that you can't really see the Bodensee from the hotel (or, at the minimum, the cloudy weather meant that we couldn't) and the hotel is off the beaten path a bit. You have to drive through almost all of Bregenz to what appears to be a very residential neighborhood, about a mile from the casino. It is only about 5-10 minutes from the interstate, though.
