2 star, 4 star what does it all mean? On a recent trip to Holland my expectations about hotel ratings were turned upside down. What does one really need out of a hotel? Who gives those ratings? On the Internet we discovered a 2 star hotel with mixed reviews. It seemed a little pricey for a 2 star hotel, the rooms were about 100 Euros a night. Our suite was $225 and it had 2 separate - extremely large - rooms and 4 beds (we were traveling with teenagers). The reviews made it sound almost stuffy, so we were quite wary of that when we checked in.
 
     In fact, the Hotel Wiechmann was one of the greatest hotels I've ever stayed at. The room was gorgeous, super high ceilings, beautiful high curved bay windows facing the canal, tasteful furnishings. The bathroom had a fantastic tub and it was very large. You could actually sit on the toilet and look out the window, watching people bike across a bridge over the Prinsengracht. There was no mini-bar, but I'm not a big fan of minibars anyway - they are always a rip-off. They served a free breakfast every day in a gorgeous dining room full of Delft pottery. The wireless broadband was free and they had 2 workstations downstairs, also free. Over the desk there was a gold record. Emmylou Harris apparently was inspired in this Hotel. The vibe was that good. And the huge German Shepard that watched over the lobby only added to that vibe. Security. A feeling of home. Free licorice and taffy at the desk. I could have stayed here a very long time.
 
     But on we went to Utrecht. We really wanted to see some of the countryside, and more cities, to get the total Dutch experience. Tonight, we'd stay in a 5 star hotel, The Grand Hotel Karel V!  We checked in. We were expecting a castle (as the place had once been a castle in the fourteenth century) but it looked more like a hospital (which it had also been, more recently). The snotty Desk Clerk acted as if our request that the 2 rooms be next to each other (which we had made weeks in advance by email) was just a huge hassle. They took us outside to another building, definitely not medieval, in fact I placed it just a few decades old, perhaps the eighties?. These five star rooms felt a bit tight, barely enough room to maneuver around your luggage. Not only was the building from the eighties, the interior decorator came from the Howard Johnson's school of hotel room decor, when in doubt paint it mauve, more gray and more blue than purple, yes mauve...with a little velvet thrown in for good measure. Whoever gave this hotel 5 stars missed this whole wing. We rejected it and asked the manager if she could find us another hotel, perhaps one that was truly historic, as Grand Hotel Karel V had been advertised. She told us, quite indignantly, that if we didn't like this hotel, that we wouldn't like any hotel in Utrecht, after all they were a 5 star hotel!  We tried to explain that the room we were shown seemed too modern, too mauve, not what we came there for. All the while I was thinking to myself that I've been in Ramada Inn's that were nicer. While a very kind male Desk Clerk was trying to call around for us, looking for other rooms, I think the manager finally realized that what we really wanted was to stay in the older part of the Hotel. She told us that if we could wait about 40 minutes, that she could have a couple of rooms for us in the older, main building of the Hotel. We went out to lunch and came back and they had our rooms ready. They were much larger, down a hospital hallway, still Howard Johnson's decor, when in doubt add more gold fabric to the room and swag it.... but hey, we were in an old castle! We tried to understand what made them 5 star rooms, over our beloved 2 star Hotel Wiechmann. They had a very well stocked mini-bar and a tiny separate room for the crapper, which was a little claustrophobic if you lean that way, and in the main bathroom, those shampoos with logos(free) and bathrobes with logos (which could be bought for a fee). Internet was free, not wireless, but they provided cords. The view out the window looked down on a very beautiful courtyard with an extremely tall tree. The tree and the courtyard almost made it a 5 star hotel, and in the end we really liked the staff. The manager was probably right, this might just be the best place to stay in Utrecht.
 
     The next day we headed to Rotterdam. Through a completely arbitrary process, we ended up at the four star Best Western Art Hotel. This was one subway stop (Maashaven) outside central Rotterdam, in a modern 12 story building, towering over the surrounding community. We kind of liked the Art Hotel, the rates were extremely reasonable (about 65 Euros a night per room) and the decor was quirky (in a good way). It was as if they ran out of money after building the hotel and hired art school students to decorate from thrift shops. The furniture was all completely unique in each room, with a different art piece outside each room displaying the room number. The effect was a post modern mishmash of  fifties and sixties furniture, with Ikea kitchenettes thrown in to be polite. A very strange thing, the hallways and lobby were inexplicably hotter than hell, not complaining, just noticing. Perhaps the building was on top of a volcano or a nuclear plant. Two real complaints: the room coffee was weak and the Internet was expensive (free in the lobby, but a ****ty connection). And maybe a third complaint, breakfast in the lobby restaurant was expensive, they had you trapped. I say that because a walk around the surrounding neighborhood showed us the only immigrants we saw on our trip, Afghans, Africans, in postwar buildings that seemed like housing projects. It felt little like the Bronx, a bit dangerous, some drug dealing and scary characters. Perhaps a normal looking store thrown in every two blocks. The obvious thing to do was to take the subway into town, which we did every day that we were there. I wanted to see the architecture in Rotterdam and starting with Rem Koolhaus and ending with a space needle, I was not disappointed. But that's another triplog someday. The amazing local transportation, from water taxis (yes straight to the Hotel) to subways, to trams made Rotterdam an extremely efficient city to get around in. We loved coming "home" every night, even though the neighborhood offered not much in the way of entertainment or fine dining. But in spite of that, the Art Hotel certainly was worth 3 of its 4 stars. Where it got the fourth, I could not say.
 
     So we headed to Delft where we had taken the advice of our good friend designer Gary Patch who picked the Hotel Plantaan for us. No we didn't stay in the "Adam and Eve" room. But we were very fond of our pleasantly decorated room in our pleasantly decorated hotel (somebody close to the owners had painted the entire hotel with pretty tableaus of sexy nymphs and naked men on a yellow background. When I say entire hotel, I mean everywhere: inside the one man elevator, behind the sink, and especially above the bed! But we were charmed. It's always great tucking your 14 year old daughter in bed underneath some flying Greek God pointing his bow and arrow at you while sporting his tiny little balls. But the Internet was free and the breakfast was amazing. We really liked Delf, we rented bicycles (here we had a chance of navigating on two wheels as opposed to Amsterdam where the bicycle traffic was a completely overwhelming concept to our North American sensibilities). So this Hotel was a three star hotel. Very confusing. Do you lose a star if you provide a free breakfast? It had one of the most pleasant lobbies of any of the hotels we had stayed in, a grand room that was part bar, part cofeeshop (real coffee) and part livingroom. The star rating concept was still confusing after 4 hotels.

     And now we were back in Amsterdam. What to do, where to stay? After much guidebook reading, we checked into the hipper than thou Lloyd Hotel. Here was a hotel that claimed to have from 1 to 5 stars! They covered all the bases. We chose a 2 star room. 160 Euros a night per room, pretty pricey for stars. So... what did we think of the refurbished insane asylum? The rooms were very small, all bed with those obnoxious fluffy sheet blankets that all of our hotels except our beloved Hotel Wiechmann had had. You get hot and then what? You don't have a sheet. I had to take mine apart everytime I encountered one. So all bed and weird long bathrooms with showers, no tub even though there was plenty of room for a tub. The bathroom was in fact bigger than the bedroom. But the cool factor was really high. Everyone was drinking the Rem Koolaid and ordinary shelves and knobs seemed really important. And the lounge, no make that the Cultural Center, that was really stunning.  Some serious culture was certainly centered there! So we got to see another side of Amsterdam, we hit the trams (which are so well done all over Holland) and we went back over to our neighborhood, the Jordan for a final dinner. And then back on the tram to the Lloyd. We checked out email, free Internet and dialed for a very early morning wakeup. The next day off to Schipol Airport - we made it there from the Lloyd Hotel in about 27 minutes. So we were way ahead of schedule. Europeans can be so damn efficient when they want to be....