Hope it wasn't the last time there.
A few days ago, my wife and I arrived from Karlovy Vary, where we rested and were treated at the Astoria sanatorium. I will try to give my impressions of the rest objectively and without prejudice.
Karlovy Vary is quite a town with a population of 50.000 people spread out on the hills. The central part of the city along the Tepla River is occupied by a resort area that stretches along two sides of the river. The cleanliness of the city and the flowers that are everywhere possible, as well as the variety of architecture of sanatoriums and their magnificence, are striking! There are hundreds of sanatoriums and rest houses, as well as hundreds of jewelry boutiques with all kinds of bijouterie - even your eyes run wide. The windows sparkle from the cleanliness and quantity of Bohemian glass and Swarovski products for sale. There are branded stores. ! All this splendor is designed for a wealthy buyer. With a 30-50% discount, you can buy Czech shoes in the Bata company store, in the Termal sanatorium on the ground floor you can buy clothes and shoes, and also go to the Super Globus by bus number one 14 stops.
Now about the sanatorium "Astoria"
This is a three-star resort, the only advantage of which is the proximity to the Kolonada with its fifteen springs. You don’t have to run far to drink water. Half of the procedures offered on the Internet are not at all. only by doctor's prescription. The rooms in the sanatorium are small and at the lowest price leave much to be desired. The furniture in the room is rather shabby. Rooms are cleaned every day and with Czech punctuality. The territory of the hotel and in the rooms is a dust collector and a hotbed of carpet mites. The food is average and doesn’t smell of any diet! They serve fried meat, fried fish and fried potatoes. Everyone speaks Russian with a big accent. As the guide told us, the Czechs remember The 68th year when the USSR crushed them with tanks. They smile and behave politely just because you pay them! When we sat for an hour and a half looking at each other, waiting for the pig, I could not stand it and politely made a remark to the senior waiter. So he looked at me with such hatred that I felt uneasy! Everyone loves gifts and takes them without exception.
Those who want to have an average rest and get an average treatment at a relatively low price, come to the sanatorium "Astoria"!!
Review - below average!
Cleaned every day, towels changed every other day, linen every 2 days. For a 3* hotel this is normal. People... People are different, more really pensioners, but this is a sanatorium - it's strange to hope here, as in Dubai and Sharm, to "break away" about Arab boys ready for anything for little money. This service is not provided here, sorry : )
Kalovy Vary is a wonderful beautiful city, here you need to rest and recover. And Astoria is a great place for this, I will definitely come here again.
PS I have been to more than 20 countries around the world, including all of Europe, Thailand and Malaysia. I have something to compare.
1. The territory of the town itself is 1.5 km long and 500 meters wide. There is nowhere to play. Further around the mountains.
3. Throughout the town, especially at mealtimes, the stink is like in dirty cheap canteens. Very unpleasant.
4. A rather poor country, compared to other Europe, although I have been in the Czech Republic not 1, but 4 times. But Karlovy Vary is poor. Shops - supermarkets are worse than our small Moscow ones. The quality of the products is terrible. Underground alcohol - in all bottles of wine - the same chatter.
5. Czechs are the most boorish people I have ever met, especially towards Russians. They are rude everywhere, with or without, and are not shy. All the women from other hotels with whom we discussed this topic came to the same opinion.
6. Vacationers - 98% Russians, Soviet poor type, average age 50-70 years. Foreigners come like a zoo for the weekend to see the Russians, and they don’t even drink water.
7. Shopping - for Soviet aunts, with a terrible assortment and space prices, this applies to everything - clothes, jewelry, souvenirs.
In a word, boring, not interesting, nowhere to walk, nothing to do.
About the hotel.
1. The view from the window was good, but to no avail. Sleeping at night and resting during the day is impossible. Everyone yells, neighs, smokes, takes pictures, children sing, orchestras play, they repair the road, they drill (I have a video), the noise is such that it’s impossible to be in the room at all. At night, drunk aunts sing "Oh, frost, frost, " etc. Cheaper view - we went there, there was no stench, the view is bad, but silence
and peace. So we didn't know if it was worth it or not.
2. The hotel itself has been working for poor Soviet women from the peripheries for 100 years. There are no foreigners at all, Muscovites can be counted on the fingers. Hence the quality of everything. The contingent is creepy, old, in some places just poor people, and everyone has more obvious problems with the head than with the stomach.
3. The food is the worst thing about this hotel. All food is expired fruits and vegetables, rotten in places, even rotten eggs, frozen meat and fish, semi-finished products, everything fried in the cheapest oil. There is no healthy balanced diet. Fried, fried, overcooked!! ! Vegetables were dipped in vinegar. What they didn’t eat for lunch, they grinded and served for dinner filled with some kind of muck. Everything is terribly ugly, harmful and not tasty. Mom and I almost lost our minds. I had to eat bread, then ask for buckwheat or rice. And even that is terrible. I tried to ask for baked potatoes - they brought french fries. The word baked is generally not understood either in Russian or in English. And everyone eats, and everyone is happy. I didn’t understand the point of traveling for that kind of money and drinking water, and then coming to the dining room and eating fried cordon bleu, which had been lying in the freezer for a year, with black fried potatoes, and a salad with rotten tomato vinegar - I didn’t understand at all. In general, we were horrified by the food. 3 times a day, they give yogurt - but they are not allowed to take it out with them, although you need to eat 5-6 times a day. I even went to the director, she knows everything and agrees with me, she herself does not eat what she offers guests, but she said that those who come here are happy, and nothing else worries her. That's all. Dining room with small tables, planted with strangers for 4 people - a terrible discomfort. In short, if you need to get diseases of the gastrointestinal tract - this is in Astoria.
4. The room is tolerable, not small, more or less clean, although quite dusty due to the carpet. Terrible mattresses and pillows. The shower is either hot or cold, very abruptly. Feng is 150 years old. But the water is good, tasty in the room. There is a refrigerator. Change of towels twice a week, change of linen once a week. Small 100 year old TV with 2 Russian channels.
5. The treatment was not impressive. Hungry for everything. Procedures for 2 weeks for 2-3.6 maximum are prescribed. 6 massages, for example, 3 parafangos, they don’t think how and when to prescribe, they can prescribe a bath after a bath or they will prescribe everything during breakfast. The procedures themselves seem cool - but they didn’t see any sense from anything.
6. "Fitness-room" - 3 semi-palomated vintage simulators in the lobby on the 5th floor. Horror. The pool is 3 by 4 meters, warm with floundering grandmothers who have fungus on their feet. Also horror.
7. What's good? I liked the sauna (but for this it was not worth going there and spending that kind of money), and well, the medical staff, although some were not sincere, were not rude to us personally, and they did not ask for money. Here it was not. The doctor is friendly, but not helpful either. There is also a free library. It was very helpful.
No drinking water is supplied in Astoria, and in general it is not supplied in any hotel. All water is in the Colonnade and Geyser, about 15 sources. They are all scattered around the city center, and are located on the street, fountains. In whatever hotel someone lives, everyone goes to drink water on the street !!!!!
And water for procedures - balneo - is supplied to almost 50% of hotels, since everything is nearby. So you can safely choose any hotel!
And of course Water. Of course, there has been a stereotype for many centuries that Carlsbad is a panacea. Even in Anna Karenina, Tolstoy wrote a lot about him. But I'm sure that it helps someone, it doesn't work for someone, and it even harms someone - and that's fine. Nothing is the same for everyone.
Unfortunately, this water did not help us in any way, and even became worse in a certain respect. Foreigners do not even touch the water, they touch it, take pictures and move on. Only Russians drink, they will buy these mugs of incubators like idiots and walk like half-dead people all over the city, sucking this water all day long. Although, according to the doctor's prescription, only 200 ml 3 times a day is necessary.
It's been such a sad journey. Didn't like ANYTHING. And of course it was embarrassing. Such money for such. It would be better for this money to hang out in Dubai for a week.