Our stay at Aquarium Hotel was quite an experience.
I will be brief in saying just this: go there if you need to stay close to Crocus exhibition centre for a trade show and you don’t want to take taxis nor the metro….otherwise go elsewhere. Our choice was due mainly to the fact that traffic in Moscow is a nightmare and we were there to attend a trade show. The hotel is conveniently located inside the exhibition centre but in an isolated area, facing the highway, and there is literally nothing to do around the location except a luxurious shopping mall which is as crowded as a desert can be. There is a metro station just 5 minutes from the hotel anyway so you can reach the city centre in about 45 / 50 minutes from there.
Hotel is very basic. I don’t complain about the hotel itself but the price (240 EUR per night) did not justify the standard and quality of the hotel itself.
Very cold reception at arrival with a very poor English…but well if you think the only persons speaking English in the entire hotel are the 3 ladies at the reception….well let’s appreciate it!
Rooms are big but….
1) I had a room with twin beds and they were extremely narrow. Mattress was like only 10 cms thick. Stained floor coverings, dark rooms…but I understood why. I was so unlucky to have a room facing the interior of the Crocus pavilions so I had the very strong lighting from the pavilion flashing inside my room all night. Bathroom was clean and spacious anyway. No minibar available and do not expect even to have free bottle of waters.
2) Restaurants and breakfast: You can choose the buffet option for your dinners and breakfasts and you cannot be mistaken. I have slept there 4 nights and everyday there was exactly the same menu. If you order a la carte anyway it was a surprise. Food quality is really good. The problem is that if you order after 7 pm they basically have run out of everything on the menu. Furthermore staff at the restaurant does not speak a word of English unless the usual sentence “don’t forget about me eh?” because they want to get tipped. If you ask for something on the menu you are obliged to point at the English translations but these are not always understood. Prices are also out of this world. If you stay here I do recommend for dining these two places which we found excellent: the Moscow Yacht Club just beside the metro station on its left side. And the Asian restaurant inside the Shopping Mall Tvoi Domus (Your House). These were really excellent places.
3) To conclude this somewhat funny report I will just mention during my stay there was also the Russian International Ballroom dance Trophy. If you like music you can wake up at 7 am with a waltz and go to bed at midnight with a polka. That was really annoying….but it cannot be attributed to the hotel. The fact is that soundproofing is absolutely absent. I could hear conversations from rooms next to mine; and hotel guests told me rooms facing the highway were even worse.
To conclude…stay here ONLY if you want to avoid traffic in the morning while having to move to geth to Crocus for some events. If you don’t need to go to Crocus…just go elsewhere!
