HotelChatter

Design
Stockholm is the damn coolest, most stylish, design-filled, offhand, collar-shrugging city in the world. Design is one of its main raisons d'être and if you haven't gone there in search of style, you'll have it rammed down your throat anyway.

Monuments are 37m-tall towering glass pillars and gardens like the Millesgården are filled with bizarrely shaped statues. Shops along the chic Birger Jarlsgatan street do a brisk trade in peaked hats, feathered handbags, innovative coffee-makers and fried egg molds. There's an outlet of Urban Outfitters set in an old theatre with a decorated dome ceiling and trendy stage scenery that you just mustmust visit, dahling. Restaurants serve tiny portions of coloured sashimi on huge white (or black) plates decorated with ornate dyed blown sugar decorations.

Hotels, then, are not to sleep in but to be seen in. This week we'll be looking at the 19th century Grand Hotel, the grandmaster of style and the only old-style hotel we've seen that manages to mix traditional décor with flash bang up-to-the-minute exclusive design features and not look like a grandma in a miniskirt and pink lipstick.

We'll also be checking out the Nordic Sea Hotel and its light-changing sister Nordic Lights, the Clarion Hotel Sign and its non-sister the Clarion Hotel with the best spa view in the world, and the Hotel Rival owned by ABBA impresario Benny Andersson.

They're all top-of-the-range design hotels you couldn't find in any other city or in any other country in the world.

Location
Location, location, location really does matter in Stockholm. Stockholm is a city of lakes and small islands and each area is separated from the others physically as well as in terms of cost, atmosphere, streetlife and nightlife.

Norrmalm and Östermalm are side by side on the 'mainland', the style capital of the capital. Hotels are expensive and super-trendy. Gamla Stan is both an island and the old town, the only 'historic' area where you can walk on something resembling a cobble and buy a tatty souvenir or a postcard (as well as check out the gay scene). Södermalm, on the other side of Gamla Stan, is where you want to go for hip but relaxed and slightly cheaper nightlife.

Pick carefully - in this style capital where everyone's looking at everyone else, where you stay says oh-so-much about who you are.

Health
Swedes are suckers for healthy eating and exercise beyond the bounds of the most fanatical doctor's imagination. Chocolate cake or rye bread? A lazy Sunday in front of the telly or a 20-mile trek across frozen forest paths on cross-country skis? A comfy, cosy sofa in a carpeted room or a stiff whiter-than-white ergonomic chair in a sterilised expanse of shiny tiled floor? You know which one you'd choose, and the Swedes would choose the opposite.

So there's no need to worry about whether hotels will be clean and tidy and have working facilities. Unless there's a nuclear war, you can rest assured that all hotels we review, and in fact any hotel you stay in while Stockholm, will be clean enough for you to lick soup off the floor.

Breakfast will be crunchy cereals, a bakery selection of bread, enough smoked salmon to feed a Russian army and a whole orchard's worth of fresh fruit and smoothies.

And expect top quality fitness centres, swimming pools and saunas. If you're silly enough to pick a hotel without this, just take your trunks along to the Centralbadet, the most fantastic art-deco spa you've ever breathed a sigh of relief in.

People
One guest at the Sheraton in Stockholm claims there was "zero personality or hospitality from the staff."

No Swede would take that as a criticism. Swedes are incredibly open, honest and efficient, they avoid conflict and exposing emotion and they will all speak English better than you do. Hotel staff will welcome you and will do everything to make your stay comfortable.

But the notion of a hotel staff member showing personality or enthusiasm is entirely alien to their way of thinking. So don't expect jokey receptionists or cheeky bellboys and you won't be disappointed.

[Photo: Netrace]

Tags: Stockholm Hotel Guide / Sweden Hotels / Design Hotels / Monica Guy

by femmefatale