The Mercure in Opole, situated opposite to the central railway station and a short walk to the city centre. Mercure is part of the Accor Group, and so I booked primarily because of that.

After an exciting overnight coach journey with Flixbus and then a morning breakfast and coffee in Opole, I decided to try to get an early check-in at the hotel. I use the logic that even if they don’t have a room available yet, I could always drop my bag off before coming back later.

Anyway, they had a room nearly ready, and it’s probably worth mentioning that the receptionist was exceptional. His engagement and friendliness seemed authentic (or I suppose well acted is possible, although unlikely) and the standard of his English was ridiculously good. Here am I trying still trying not to get the Polish words for nine and ten confused (dziewięć and dziesięć) and here was he with a fluency that was, if I’m being honest, better than many native English speakers.

He suggested that as there was a short wait that I might want to have my welcome drink immediately, which seemed a good idea. So I had my Żywiec and waited for the room to be ready, which only took around two minutes.

The receptionist (I say receptionist, but he was probably a manager, and if he wasn’t, he should have been) explained that the welcome gift of fruits wasn’t quite ready and it’d be brought to the room later on. Through long experience, these things often never quite arrive, but true to his promise, he brought a plate with fruits on, and a slice of cheesecake. This was far better than a couple of apples, which is what I was unexcitedly expecting.

The room, which was on the third floor and overlooked the main road into the city centre. I’m clearly not normal, but I do quite the ambient noise from streets, it adds to the whole ambience of a room. There were no noise disturbances either internally or externally though which irritated me.

A fully stocked collection of tea and coffee supplies, with two bottles of water also included. These were all kept fully stocked during my five-night stay. The room was also spotless and, indeed, was one of the cleanest hotel rooms that I’ve been in. It reached the stage that I went around the room deliberately trying to find dust or grime, but I wasn’t successful in that hunt.

The breakfast selection. This was also a peaceful process, as although there were always several people eating breakfast, the room was large and so it was easy to find a seat.

There were some hot breakfast options, but I was content with the breads and cold meats. My only little complaint here is that they had some peppered salami for the first couple of days, which I became quite partial to, but they didn’t have any on the other days (although that was perhaps because I’d eaten it all).

The cake selection at breakfast.

Bread, cold meats, vegetable things, all very lovely.

Apologies for the gratuitous photos of teabags, but this is definitely what I call proper tea. An innovative and interesting selection. The coffee was rather good as well.

I’ve stayed in a lot of hotels and I’ve long since given up being frustrated with incompetent hotel management. It appears to be a complete mystery to some hotel managers that guests do actually want regular restocking of in-room drinks and soaps, that they might want to know when breakfast is or have a menu for the restaurant in the room.

This hotel managed to be the entire reverse of that, it gave me the impression of being competent. I couldn’t manage to find any fault with the hotel at any stage, with the exception that the wi-fi was a little slow at times. The room was clean, the staff were friendly, the breakfast was of an excellent quality and the rooms were cleaned and restocked efficiently.

At check-out, there was a different member of staff who managed to perform the process efficiently and politely. And, once again, with a fluent knowledge of English. Overall, it was about as perfect a stay as I’ve had in a hotel. All very lovely indeed.