SOBE SIMONI – Split, Croatia (Three Star Hotel)

If you are thinking of staying here … don’t.

The reason we stayed here instead of an alternative was that they advertised ‘Free Parking right outside your room’. The day that we arrived, we asked about the parking, and all we got was a shrug. All the parks on the street (if you can call it that) were full. It is situated down a skinny little one way alley that is squeezed between the accommodation and the railway tracks.

The ‘Double’ room was tiny. The double bed was built in and fitted flush with three of the walls. The space that was left, two people couldn’t pass each other in. There was nowhere to store your luggage, the bed wasn’t high enough to put your bags underneath. We wondered what the power socket was doing up near the ceiling. We ruled out a ceiling fan as it wouldn’t have had room to spin without hitting the walls.

The bathroom was tiny as was the shower. The only way to get into the shower with the doors fully open, was sideways. If you drop the soap, you will need to open the doors so that you can bend over to pick it up. There is a hand held shower attachment, which is just that, as the fitting to hold the shower head is broken, and there is evidence of other broken fittings as well. There is a soap dispenser in the shower, but it looks unused and like it has been empty for some time. The hand basin has cold water only and no plug.

There was a fold-up chair in the room, however there is nowhere to put it to sit, unless you want to sit just inside the door, jammed against the bathroom/toilet door. The bed itself, has several springs that persistently jab at certain points in your back.

All of this would be bearable, if you were getting a real bargain, but this is the worst value for money that we have stayed in yet. We have stayed in youth hostels with better facilities, and certainly more room. Actually this is the worst place that we have stayed in yet.

Because to cap off all of the above, the place reeked like a stale ashtray. It has that ingrained stench of stale cigarette smoke that you find on a Monday morning in a pub that has been locked up since Saturday night. And there are no windows to speak of to air it out. After a night of being closed in it is almost nauseating. There is a small window up high that is permanently ajar, that opens straight onto the brick wall next door. When staying here it feels like you have been allocated the storeroom to sleep in.

Sobe Simoni has two things going for it, (a) location, it is very close to the trains, ferries and only a few minutes walk to the Old Town, and (b) it makes everywhere else that you stay seem luxurious. Unfortunately this ‘Hotel’ tainted and shortened the length of our stay in Split, and we were looking forward to coming here too.