WiseStay

I’ve stayed at this hotel twice before, once with family and once with a friend, and in both visits I was very happy with the experience. The rooms have excellent heating systems, private toilets that are clean and pleasant, private …

The hostels in this neighborhood should request to police their area. I was on my way to check in late night when a guy wearing hood riding a bike pursued me. I ran from him & he only stopped following when I reached the main road. So no business as the prospect client ran away from danger.

This is a conveniently central hotel, looking directly at the Principality stadium from the other side of the river, and a mere 7-8 minute walk (if that) from Cardiff Central rail station. I chose this place for me and my girlfriend as we were attending a wedding function at Tramshed, about the same distance, and it was one of the cheapest options. It is one of those affairs where rather than an obvious manned desk, you're given a 4-digit keycode that's for both the main front door and your room. No issues using that, thankfully. Room selection wise, there's a range from tiny single bed box rooms to luxuriously spaced 'king' bedrooms. Ours was a normal sized double. I'd actually originally booked myself a tiny single until it turned out my girlfriend was invited to the function also, and luckily I'd booked a refundable rate so I could make a new booking. Late checkout, early check-in, luggage holding services are available at extra cost. The room itself was acceptable for our needs. Bed and linen comfy enough, the TV worked, standard tea/coffee refreshments, couple of hangers, and an acceptable bathroom, albeit with some weird iridescent sparkly walls. We didn't use the shower as we'd showered that morning and were going to shower off our hangovers at home. The windows do have some kind of latch that stops them opening more than a few inches, but you can just press the little metal hooks down and open them properly, so not the usual oppressive Travelodge sweatbox with that little cable that stops you opening the window much. One of the downsides is the hairdryer was on its last legs, making a godawful uneven buzzing noise before dying. We only needed it to dry my girlfriend's rain-soaked handbag, thankfully. Another is the plumbing means you hear it if any of the neighbouring occupants shower, use the toilet or the sink, at some points even sounding like we'd left the tap running or something. Walls are paper thin, and we swore we could smell weed wafting through the bathroom vent. I hope we didn't disturb anyone when we arrived past 1am in our inebriated state. Accessibility isn't perfect, but it's an existing building converted into a hotel so we weren't expecting there to be a lift. One thing that did tick me off is the cleaner hadn't got the memo that we'd opted for late checkout and knocked at half 10 in the morning. Needless to say in my hungover state, I was rather terse with him. In short though, this is more than adequate if you just need somewhere central for one night and aren't looking for any luxuries.