Some of the hotels in main part of Trier can be a let down in one respect or another. The Mercure Hotel Trier Porta Nigra front desk staff gives itself heirs and graces, my tussle with then last Xmas, review on Tripadvisor made me quit the hotel for future consideration. The Hotel Paulin bounces your bookings - see my previous Tripadvisor review. Whilst the door handles fall of the Arcadia Hotel [it was Mercury once] after it changed hands and they probably got rid of the maintenance man and the breakfasts went small.

So with unfortunate experience at these fairly expensive hotels we tried out the Penta this year. One was not disappointed. Breakfast was extensive and good. Front desk staff very friendly. Personally I'm not bothered whether the front desk looks like a bar or doubles up.

The décor is something interesting, retro heterosexual disco is the best description. You felt that that it was Thursday night where it was the gay night but you had to put up with the hetro imagery. The scant clad females embossed on the glass of the downstairs rooms, the disco lights, the male toilets with images of women with zero clothes on and the peep panels made into the toilet wall showing undressed women of the gents, not forgetting the the multi coloured urinals that perhaps could be best described as perhaps a touch gay. Meanwhile in the ladies they got treated to male torsos on their inside toilet doors. In the interests of diversity I would recommend that they perhaps swap one door from each loo and change the gents peep pictures rather than stuffing heterosexual imagery down every-bodies throats who don't want to see it... still the pole dancing club is just at the bottom of the road so perhaps they think they have assimilated into the community. So I would slap the interior designer about and those that OK'ed it myself since it doesn't tick the diversity boxes in this day and age.

The bedrooms were large. We didn't totally master the radiator controls. It was winter, the room was a bit on the cold side and the quilt was a summer one with no extra blankets. The toiletry stuff was OK, novel again like the downstairs décor, but would have been better to provide quality fragranced stuff.

The double bed was a bit soft so it is probably time to change them. Internet wasn't free but the wifi was reliable throughout the hotel and about half the price that the likes of the Mercury would charge you. Actually there was one free Mac internet downstairs but in these days of being connected you want to connect up your own device rather than sit in a corridor fiddling with a Mac.

Car parking is outside not free although I think you can access the covered parking but this is more expensive. So a variable for winter when the weather is bad and you like to have the car garaged.

All in all it is a reasonable hotel, perhaps by next year they might have changed the mattresses to something harder for those of us that suffer from backache and adjusted the downstairs toilet décor along the lines I suggest.... the redeeming feature was breakfast, the friendly helpful staff and indeed the quality internet connection.