光譜飯店(Hotel Spectrum)

I had a very pleasant stay at the hotel. The hotel and my room was very clean and you even have a small balcony. The receptionist was very kind to give some information. It takes about 20 minutes to walk to the city center.

After reading some of the reviews I was apprehensive about staying here but it really wasn’t bad. Check in was smooth, parking can be limited but we always got a space. The room was large and the bathroom looked new. Beds were comfy and the room was clean. It actually reminded me of a basic travelodge in the UK. Breakfast was continental and was okay. The restaurant/bar wasn’t open in the evening which was a shame. We ate in the town every evening which was about ten to fifteen minutes walk away through a tower block estate which turned out to be perfectly safe. It’s a cheap hotel so don’t expect too much but we stayed for 5 nights and it was really okay. My only criticism was there are no tea and coffee making facilities in the rooms and nowhere to get a drink of any kind after about ten pm so if you do stay here make sure you stock up as it’s either that or tap water.

Arriving at the Hotel Spectrum in Trnava was not immediately inspiring; imagine you're in a dodgy-looking industrial estate in Slough that's been on Crimewatch. There's a gaggle of sketchy characters outside, some smoking enthusiastically, others spitting vigorously and some legendary multi-taskers are managing both. We enter reception and the smell-scape is an instant olfactory classic: high notes of boiled cabbage, embracing stale sweat and diesel with an undertone of despair interlaced with anxiety. The receptionist is a sullen, rude woman in her early thirties with ambitions of doing other things like pole-dancing with a snake or running escorts from a van. We check-in and, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, our fate is now sealed for the next 5 days in Trnava - for there are no rooms or hotel places available thanks to the World Powerlifting Championships being held there. The room was thoroughly grim, think more custodial sentence than mini-break, more community service than room service. The carpet was a cunningly-coloured faecal-brown affair, no doubt serving as camouflage for the stains and odours lurking deep within its insidious fibres. The bed was rock-hard and creaked constantly, the pillows were huge and stuffed with lumpy matter that defied successful identification, even after 5 days of strenuous and committed scrutiny. The bathroom was scuzzy with mould creeping around the edges of the shower almost as if even this hapless fungal organism harboured its very own deep concerns about stopping at the Hotel Rectum which is what by now we had taken to calling it. I am 55 and have travelled and stayed in hotels in almost 80 countries, so is the very worst hotel I've stayed in? Almost folks but that notorious accolade still belongs to The Hotel Lefkas, an establishment where, unlike the Hotel Rectum, the guests spat in the actual hotel rather than just outside it. So my advice is this, unless you're a recklessly adventurous bacteriologist or a novice people-trafficker on a budget, stay far away from this place.