The Hotel Esplanade***** - where appearance and standard do not match... at all! A beautiful building, recently restored to its imperial splendour and advertises as the only 5-star hotel of the area! But watch out - the '5-stars' appear to only reflect the huge and well appointed rooms/ public areas (even though most of the crystal chandeliers and original art nouveau light fittings stayed simply switched off in these public areas and the hotels corridors). As to the 5-star service - well there simply is none! First of all, many of the advertised features are only available for unheard of charges, e.g. a not-advertised charge per person per time to use the hotel pool of £10 and if you would want to use the sauna as well - please ring at least 30 minutes in advance to get it unlocked and it cost a mere £20 per person! The attitude of the Front Desk staff very much resembles their marble surrounding - and during our 4-night-stay we had the same nerve-wrecking problem to get a simple bacon-and-eggs order out from the clearly unqualified and not too bothered chef each and every morning. House keeping was very good waiting outside your door in the mornings to clean the room - but to make things nice and easy for the staff, the morning clean-up would include the complete turning-down-service already as well as recycling of already used bath/shower accessories... If you were to look for the senior Management - you normally would discover them either having a great time with friends at the hotel bar or wandering round the Park smoking - but not once could we see any interest paid in delivering a certain service one does expect from a so-called 5-star Hotel... Thank Heaven for the friendly and helpful staff of the Hotel Bar / the Edward-VII-Restaurant even though many of the advertised dishes/ beverages turned out to be out of stock or unavailable but waiter Lukasz and his colleagues always had a smile and that free of charge!