NB these notes were taken during a hotel stay in 2007.
Let me start by stating that I have stayed in worse hotels in Liverpool . Previously I had a very poor experience at the Adelphi: Poor attention to detail with the cleaning of the room and very slow customer service. The Marriot started well with prompt and courteous room service, well appointed room, clean and modern en suite with a decent shower which was let down by a small detail: No hot water. The less said about the cooked breakfast at the Marriot, the better. Is it so difficult to obtain a decent sausage for a cooked breakfast? So to further my quest for a decent breakfast, I tried a different hotel this time: The Solna.
As you drive into the Hotel car park, there is a speed hump for anyone courageous enough to be driving a family car at any rate of speed through the closely spaced stone gate posts. Steps lead up to the main doors which are mostly glazed with uncracked panes of glass (sort out the other two panes, chaps.) and once through, the greeting was amiable and my room key dispensed with reasonable promptness. No awkwardness about whether to tip or not for carrying my heavy case up the stairs and to my room, because the amiable chap stayed on his arse behind the front desk as he called out directions to my room. No, sorry; to my suite. I don’t recall booking or agreeing to pay for a suite, but my room door is clearly bestowed with a brassy nameplate announcing that I am staying in the something-or-other suite. Have I taken a wrong turning? Well the key fits, and it opens the door to my suite. I turn the light on to reveal: A room with ideas above its station. This is no suite. Surely one would expect a suite to have a sitting area with a sofa or easy-chair, or even some floor space which isn’t used up by the introduction of a suitcase, of all things, to the room. I’d even settle for curtains which meet in the middle, I’m not fussy. Well clearly I am, but I prefer the term: discerning.
I’m sure, when I booked the room, I’d informed them that I was leaving the family at home but for some reason the double bed and the single bed, crowbared into this room, were not sufficient for me and my suitcase. Clearly what I needed was a camp-bed to hide part of the three square meters of wasted floor space and to slow down my access to the wardrobe and thus put off the inevitable disappointment of discovering the ironing board.
When I booked the room, I asked if an ironing board could be brought to the room upon my arrival, because I was going out to dinner shortly afterwards. I was informed, with misplaced pride, that every room had an ironing board and iron. How could the Hotel survive by tying up capital in having a decent ironing board in every room? Simple: buy the most useless excuses for ironing boards you can find, then every patron of the hotel can be irritated simultaneously should they all need to iron at the same time. The slightest nudge to the thing caused it to collapse, so I decided not to rest the iron itself on the board but on the desk. I’m not sure whether the creases on my shirt were caused by one or more of the collapses or by the scrotal nature of the ironing board cover; I resolved to keep my jacket on all evening. At least I’m in with a chance of a hot shower and a decent breakfast.
Oh dear. The shower had been running for one minute and still no hot water, not even tepid. Bored of standing in the bathroom, shivering, waiting for the warm water, I tried sitting on the bed. Then I tried watching some celebrity come dancing thingy on the TV: some chap was doing the itchy-bottom-dance (Salsa to those in the know.) Four minutes gone: still cold. Had I missed my allocation of hot water between minutes one and three? No; One more minute (and another televised dancer in need of Anusol) later and I finally had a hot shower. Revived by the shower I was more forgiving about the state of this old hotel. It’s not a modern, soulless building; it has character, it has history, it has a broken hook on the back of the bathroom door, a toilet roll holder that falls off the wall when you touch it; it has blobs of white paint on the curtains, wallpaper (and even some left on the woodwork.) The TV remote worked – I know this because the light on the remote flashed brightly each time a button was pressed – but it had obviously fallen out with the TV, because it was paying no attention to the frantic messages sent from the controller. So I was stuck watching the dance of pruritus ani until I was ready for dinner.
Dinner was magnificent. Dinner was a short taxi ride away from the hotel. On my return, steamingly replete, I slept like a log and coincidentally awoke next morning feeling as rough as one.
Breakfast started well: The cornflakes were done perfectly. A little breakfast menu informed me that I could choose from bacon, sausage, fried mushrooms, tomato, baked beans, egg cooked to your choosing and black pudding. I love black pudding. I decided to have bacon, sausage, black pudding and poached egg. I prepared to give my order to the waitress as she approached. A competent waitress, she had no need of a pad to take my order. A clairvoyant waitress, she set down a plate of the cooked breakfast in front of me before I could place my order. Impressive: A cooked breakfast just as it was ordered. By whom it was ordered, I don’t know, but not by me. There was no black pudding and the egg was fried. The bacon had been warmed under the grill and removed before the fat approached anything you could describe as crispy, the mushrooms must have come out of a tin, but the fried egg was done perfectly and would have pleased any man who had wanted a fried egg and not a poached one. Now, on to the sausage: One thing I strive to get right at breakfast, and occasionally get wide of the mark, is the perfect poached egg. There seems to be a real knack to it. Sausages, however, I have a real aptitude for. I’m obviously gifted, because so many hotel kitchens fail where I triumph. Here’s my secret: You go out and buy decent bloody sausages! How hard can it be? Solna Hotel, your sausages get 6/10.
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