First off, Venlo was a pretty awesome town. Lots of clothing stores and shops and bars (no clubs or places to dance, just pure old fashioned drinking). The hotel is smack dab in the middle of the action which is great! Check in was pleasant, there was a friendly woman (I believe the owner) behind the reception desk waiting to take my money for what would become the worst hotel of my 3 week, 9 hotel tour of Europe. I found this place on the Floriade website and failed to check the reviews first. The cost is 101 euros ($130 USD) a night for a hostile room that is much like the swedish prison cell referenced by the other reviewer. Holly hell. When we opened the door, the room had expansive ceilings, which was the nicest feature. There was no headboard above the bed, just a dirty white wall with various fluid stains on it- literally had to grab a towel and scrub it before my head would lay there. The white linens on the bed were clean, but the bed spread was a collaboration of hairs collected from the 37 previous people who stayed here. The bathroom was as large as the bedroom, however, they managed to put the sink and toilet and tub in the same corner, leaving the rest wasted space. You could literally wash your hands, sit on the can, and soak your feet in the tub at the same time, despite it being a HUGE bathroom. The bathroom was relatively clean, there were mildew stains that had been painted over on the ceiling, which were now pealing and flaking onto the floor and shower. The heater in the bathroom does not work, there's no hair dryer, and the towels are gray, so you know they have not been bleached, and I have better quality rag towels at home. The shower and sink valves have a habit of turning themselves off, so you cannot adjust the temperature to wash your hands, it's either scolding hot, or freezing cold, and then will turn itself off randomly. Needless to say, we had to go and try and find another hotel with no luck, so we returned to sleep. Well, guess what... no AC, so you have to sleep with the window open to keep the room at 75, rather then 85. This would be fine, I understand the cost of running an AC, BUT there is a damn restaurant in the hotel that served a bunch of drunks dinner at 10pm. They sat there and screamed and laughed for hours into the night right below the room! Ehhh, we are on vacation, so we will sleep in, right? Hell no. The damn church clock dings ALL NIGHT LONG! Its like being in that weird aunts house as a kid who has all the coo coo clocks when you just want to sleep. Not to mention that I awoke several times to what appeared to be voiced in my room, but it was just our neighbors next door, having a conversation that I could hear through the paper thin walls. Another great feature of this hotel is that all of the doors have been adjusted so tightly that each guest has a hard time getting the locks to turn, so you also get to hear each guest as they wake up to go out for the day, struggling to unlock, and re-lock their doors again. grumbling and laughing in frustration as you're trying to sleep. Breakfast time! We go to the dungeon breakfast room, which was basically like a semi-finished east coast style basement. This is the fourth hotel we stayed in that had breakfast included, and it was the worst. The eggs were sitting in a broth, they were literally inedible. The hardboiled eggs were cooked so long the shells fused to the whites. The bread was from the day old section, when toasted, it tasted of burnt air. Save yourself the hassle, go get breakfast elsewhere. If you MUST eat here, stick to the granola and yogurt, the only edible foods down there. How is this for ambiance, you sit there eating your egg soup and burnt air bread at a table as people take there morning craps above your head and you get to listen to them flush it down the pipes running along the side of your table. MMMM. Honestly, this was a youth hostile converted to a "trendy hotel" to rip off tourists. At a price point of half this I would have been pissed. I think the other reviewers stayed before they changed the prices for the events. read more