We stayed at Europa City hotel as it was the official hotel for a festival we were going to and wanted to be near everyone else in the festival and all our friends. Three of us decided to share a room and so booked a business class room. Upon arrival check-in was pretty smooth, however when we got up to the room we found only a double bed. Seeing that the receptionist knew that there were three of us staying in a room, this shouldn't have been the case so we went back downstairs to complain and ask about the third bed. We got told seeing that we'd booked a business class room, an extra bed would be taken to the room and that we couldn't switch hotel rooms as they'd overbooked. The extra bed turned out to be one of those camping esque beds meant for small children and not a 20 year old woman. I spent every night feeling the springs against my ribcage on this bed. There was barely enough room for the extra bed in this room and it got very cramped and on top of that they forget to give me a pillow for the bed, which I had to go down to reception to complain about and only then did they tell us that we could dial reception from the hotel room. There was also two of everything in the room, including towels and cups, although when the maids came the next day they did give us some extra towels.
Sleeping at first was hard as we had to have the aircon system on due to the summer heat of Lithuania. The aircon would make a ridiculously loud noise every couple of minutes that sounded like it was either on its way to breaking or needed to be cleaned. Eventually we got used to it though. The next day we headed down to the breakfast buffet which was included in the price. This was a very interesting affair, with boiled sausages, mashed potato, pasta, some days boiled veg, a suspicious looking porridge thing, salty cornflakes, watered down juice, tea that wouldn't brew and cake. Asides from the cake which was fabulous, it was all a bit disjointing and not very breakfasty and filling and very cheaply produced.
The restaurant also wasn't that good. The service was slow, food came out at different times on many occasions and there wasn't many decent vegetarian dishes for my friends. The quality was ok but not great and the price was a bit overpriced. We opted to eat in town on many occasions.
On the plus side I think the hotel was in a fairly good location. It was close to two supermarkets and the main street in Vilnius, but wasn't in the old town. If you also have friends staying in the hotel you can ring their rooms by dialing their room number into the phones in your room which was pretty nifty. Because we were at the festival the whole week we stayed there we were barely in the hotel apart from sleeping, I think if we weren't at the festival it would have made the trip a lot more less enjoyable having to be in the hotel for large amounts of time.
Checking out was also a nightmare. It turns out the hotel had been very sneaky and left a small chocolate on the side in the bathroom which we thought one of our friends had left us and so ate. This was included in the minibar, even though there was no price on the chocolate and no indication it was from the minibar. We had to pay 3 ltl for it.
The overall experience of Europa City Hotel was as if they were trying to cut the costs for themselves in as many ways as possible and try to get as much money out of us as possible, which isn't a nice experience. I wouldn't recommend this hotel to anyone.
- Europa City Vilnius
