Fun in Berlin

I’m on vacation right now staying at the Holiday Inn Express Berlin City Centre.

I booked a 2 bed room on Priority club points for 25,000 points per night.  Since I was looking to minimize out-of-pocket expenses I did not look at a paid stay for comparison.  (If your situation is different I would urge you to look at the cost per night of paid versus points).

• The room is small and has about a 1 yard buffer around the beds
• There is a hot pot with instant coffee, tea, creamer, sugar, and mugs
• The bath amenities only include affixed soap/shampoo next to the sink and toilet
• The hot water is very adequate
• There is no iron or ironing board in this room
• Wifi is free in the lobby, wired internet is 4 Euro for an hour, 10 Euro for 3 hours, 19 Euro for a day in the room
• The lobby gets quite full in the evening from all of the people occupying the lobby for wifi
• The breakfast is great, although not really any hot options.
• Options include: several breads, several luncheon meats and cheeses, hard boiled eggs, muesli and American cereals and milk, yogurt, several espresso machines and a couple types of juice.  The spread was quite nice and should please most American palates
• There is a great German restaurant across the street with a menu translated into English, Spanish, and Italian.  They have much better beer than the hotel
• No American style outlets
• Taxi from the HBF for 2 people was less than 10 Euro in calm traffic.
• The hotel is not near any trains or heavy traffic so it is pretty quiet at night

I mainly just stayed here because the Hilton Berlin did not have any award nights available when I wanted to be here and the Hampton Inn is over in the West city centre.  I found out that doesn’t really matter since the double decker tour bus went over in that area also.  I might stay there next time depending on when I come back and what’s going on to bring me back.

Checkpoint Charlie is only a few blocks from the hotel and I wouldn’t be a true American tourist without visiting.