I am an alumni of the local university, so I am very familiar with the history of the place. When I graduated the building housed one of the university buildings and a theatre in the attic. So a completely different place.
When I was invited to a dinner at my old student's union, just up the road from this hotel, we decided that a night here would be a better choice than driving back.
Arriving there was a bit of a mission as a traffic pylon was installed in front of the hotel and our navigation system was not aware of this. So we had to driver around to get to the parking place. (You have to drive in over the Generaal Foulkesweg)
The entrance way was exactly as how I remembered it. The inside is completely different You enter a great space and face the kitchen of the O Mundo restaurant. Modern and as efficient as one expects form such an establishment. We were shown our room on the first floor facing the cheese shop across the road. The room was modern, spacious, well laid out and the bed comfortable. Loved the fact that it has an old-fashioned thing in using real keys! The bathroom slightly odd in lay out. Nitpicky things would be that the door to the shower was not installed correctly resulting in water dripping onto the mat in front of it and that in winter underfloor heating would have been more comfortable. But really the room is very nice to stay in.
The breakfast is included in the room price and as one would expect with a michelin star kitchen breakfast and service were excellent. Coffee wonderful, fresh orangejuice and fruit, boiled egg and an abundance of choice of breads, preserves, meats etc. We really enjoyed it.
It is fun to go back to part of your history and see how it has changed and how it hasn't. The fact that this hotel, once designated to university building is back to it's historical roots is one of the developments I have to applaud. If we have another invitation like we had this time we will do the same thing again.
