Hotel Polis Grand, Athens

Good location. Centric. Near Metro. Unfriendly waiters. Poor breakfast.

Clean, friendly athmosphere, WLAN for free, attentive staff, extraordinary roof garden with spectacular view, good food and nice coffee shop on the ground floor... all in all - a very good choice with a perfect price-service-ratio.

After reading the reviews we thought we could expect a decent 4 star hotel - no way! 2/3 star hotel only. Room was ok but we'd requested non-smoking & it stank of fags - even the bed linen. When we got home all our clothes that had been in the cupboards reeked of cigarettes! Hotel is a glorified office block with a smart frontage. THe view from our 6th floor window was straight out onto a dilapidated highrise office block. The "Roof Garden" - what a joke! Not so hideous at night but during the day just awful views onto office roofs - complete with all their junk! Also, locked most days - could sit inside the glassed area but at 25 degrees who wants to do that - also no one serving, filthy & chairs piled up; not at all welcoming - bit annoying as this was the reason we'd booked this hotel as we were there for a week & fancied somewhere nice to sit outside, have a drink & read a book!! Breakfast was included but this was a false economy as it was the worst breakfast I've had anywhere in the world! Plastic meat & cheese slices, no fresh fruit, tinned apricots every day, no fresh fruit juices - "squash", no bottled water just jugs of tap water. The mini croissants were nice but not there everyday. The dining room was like a 1950s grotty diner! The photos are sooooo misleading - obviously a very talented photographer! The hotel was very central - near Omonia Station. The staff are excellent and very helpful. There's a nice modern cafe at the base of the hotel where you could buy decent baguettes & lovely cakes. The hotel is extremely noisy - as are most Athens hotels - right on main road, so after 5.30am you are awoken by people banging around and very busy traffic hooting their horns - take ear plugs! I would book elsewhere next time & if in the summer definitely somewhere with a pool!

Rooms are pretty new and clean, staff are friendly, breakfast OK, very close to the center even if Omonia area is a bit rough.

a nice hotel, the most outstanding feature being the very pleasant helpful and welcoming staff who could not do enough for me. the worst aspect is the location, central but in the seedy though not especially dangerous omonia area