Saw this hotel website online after searching for hotels in Norwich. Submitted several enquiries and this hotel was one of the first to get back to me with a vacancy. £60 for a triple room, all rooms ensuite with tea/coffee making facilities and tv, so thought it was a good cheap deal at the last minute and booked. The picture on the website looked alright. Typical Edwardian type house, quite presentable. Very convenient for the town centre.

Arrived at hotel to be greeted by a very friendly but quite inexperienced lady. She was alone managing the place with no sign of 'the boss' (the person I spoke to on the phone when booking) and at one point I wasn't even sure if she was a guest her self or if she worked there as she didn't seem very professional. In the room next door to the 'reception' were a noisy, rowdy bunch of young people. We also saw a young 'Eastern European' woman walk around in ther pyjamas to talk on the phone outside. First impressions were not good.

We were directed to our room on the 3rd floor (no lift) and struggled with our heavy luggage up the 6 flights of stairs to the top floor. There was a very musty smell as we climbed the stairs with an obvious presence of damp and lack of air freshener. As we opened our door, we knew we couldn't stay there for the sake of our health and sanity! There was no en-suite bathroom, the towels had black and brown stains all over them. The bathrooms were on the floor below. As a female, I was not willing to walk up and down the stairs in my nightie going to and from my room to the bathroom especially when we were expecting an ensuite. I had a look at the bathrooms below and found dirt in one of the sinks and someone's old underwear on one of the radiators in the shower room. The beds were simply pine framed single beds, probably a bunk bed at one stage. Only one small pine cupboard between the 3 of us. There was a sink on one wall and an old kettle for making tea and coffee.

Straight away we went downstairs to query the 'en-suite' bathroom only to put this poor woman in a right old panic. I thought she was going to cry! She tried to assure us she could swap our room for another ensuite, though it would mean physically moving another bed into the room by herself as no one was around to help. Anyway, we didn't want to put her through the bother and luckily we hadn't placed a deposit for the room or anything so didn't lose any money when we decided not to stay there. Instead we booked ourselves into a nearby Holiday Inn for 4 times the price as it was the only place available at such short notice on a Bank Holiday weekend, and managed to sleep comfortably.

This just goes to show 'Never judge a book by it's cover'...