Saturday, August 7, 2010

wheelchair accessible hotel review

Hotel review

Holiday Inn, downtown Turku, Finland
EERIKINKATU 28, TURKU FI 20100
Phone: 358-2-338211, Fax: 358-2-3382299


July 17-July 29, 2010

David C. Kopaska-Merkel
jopnquog gmail.com

Let me just say that this is the best wheelchair accessible hotel room I have stayed in (with the possible exception of the only other Finnish Hotel where I have stayed). Also, an unlimited breakfast buffet made the price (a little more than €100 per night) extraordinarily reasonable. When we go back to Turku, we will stay there again.

In the interests of full disclosure I should say that I like small children and was traveling in a manual wheelchair with which I need considerable pushing help.

The Finns don't understand the relationship between wheelchairs and thresholds. Had I been rolling in my power chair I would have been able to get in over the bumpy spots. They were a problem. The lobby was as large as it needed to be and the desk clerks all spoke English. This was lucky for me, because I don't speak Finnish or Swedish, the two languages of Turku (besides English: most people in their 40s or younger speak at least a little English). There were only two elevators, but it is a fairly small hotel, and we usually did not have to wait long.

The room was small, but it was large enough. We had rented a portable lift, and there was room to maneuver it so that I could get in and out of bed and in and out of my manual chair and shower chair with no problem. I could not really reach the desk, but we could have moved it so that I could reach it. I could see out the window, but there wasn't much of a view. If the neighbors across the way had been exhibitionists, the view might have been a little interesting!

The bathroom has a low threshold, but I was able to get over it by myself, and I am not very strong. The shower area is small, and I kept bumping off the water with my elbow as I used the hand-held shower. It would have been nice to be able to get away from the controls without being out of the shower curtain.

The breakfast buffet was awesome. I had not even realized we got one, but I think it's the main reason other guests choose the son of having it in in quite a few restaurants in tour crew on this trip, I estimate that the breakfast was worth at least €20 per person. (If you eat a big breakfast, which we did.) We ate so much breakfast that most days we were able to skip lunch, and we like to eat lunch. We're talking smoked fish, scrambled eggs, bacon and sausage, pancakes, three kinds of bread, salad, watermelon, diced melons and other fruit, bananas pears and oranges, coffee and all of the usual variety of breakfast drinks, Archipelago bread, which is almost like a dessert bread, yogurt, dry cereal, and I'm sure there was more.

Right across the street from the front door of the hotel is the bus stop for Moominworld. This is like Disney World. And this explains why the free breakfast buffet is full of families with two or three children below the age of seven. I'm sure lunch is expensive and not nutritious at Moominworld. If you eat enough free breakfast at the hotel, you don't have to buy lunch at all. By and large, the kids are well behaved, and we had no problem with them.

To summarize, what I like least about the hotel are the danged thresholds. What I like most about it is the wonderful breakfast. I have to say that the location, just a few blocks from the Turku town square, isn't too shabby either.


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1 comment:

Geofhuth said...

Wow, David, you were in Turku a year (to the day in spots) after we were. A nice little city. We spent two weeks in Mietoinen, about 30 minutes outside Turku, but we gave a reading in Turku, toured the castle, had some other fun. Did go to Naantali, so we saw the island of Moominworld and the president's summer residence, but we didn't visit either.

Geof