Nina's Blog - Thursday 28th May 2026
Thursday 28th May 2026, about 09:00
At breakfast in the Best Western, Mansfield Road.
It's a buffet so you assemble your own breakfast but this isn't a grand inner city hotel in Germany, Poland, or Austria with hundreds of guests. And that means there's not enough turnover in things like fried eggs so they were all rather solid and rubbery, gave them a miss.
The menu on the table does point out in small low contrast type that you can ask for poached eggs, etc., to be cooked to order. When I say small low contrast type I don't mean they tried to hide the information, the whole menu is like that.
In fact the whole place is just irritatingly not quite satisfactory. It has all the right components but they aren't quite assembled right. In the room there are three mirrors, one above the desk, one almost full length on the wall at the foot of the bed, and one above the sink in the bathroom. But when I tried to apply my lipstick I discovered that the lighting was, for want of a better word, arranged so that my lips were in shadows whichever mirror I tried. There are bedside lights both sides of the bed and they have LED reading lights on flexible stalks but they are mounted so low that it's impossible to point them at a book while sitting upright.
At breakfast instead of bottles of sauce on each table there are bowls filled with sachets in the buffet cabinets. These sachets have no obvious way of being opened, I had to saw at one with the cutlery. The Chase (Greene King) in Nuneaton did breakfast better in most ways.
This place was converted from a row of Victorian middle class houses and I think the original conversion must have been done a long time ago. Whoever did it didn't address the problem of squeaky floorboards. I don't mind the boards in my room squeaking:-) but it's annoying when the ones in the room above do and there is an occupant who seems to spend the evening pacing back and forth!
I was upgraded from a single to a double room, thank goodness. This room is fairly dark and doesn't get much direct sunlight which with current weather conditions is a good thing so if I close the window before I go out it should stay relatively cool.
The place is a bit like the Tree Hotel in Iffley but on a grander scale, all the right materials put together with insufficient thought.
At breakfast in the Best Western, Mansfield Road.
It's a buffet so you assemble your own breakfast but this isn't a grand inner city hotel in Germany, Poland, or Austria with hundreds of guests. And that means there's not enough turnover in things like fried eggs so they were all rather solid and rubbery, gave them a miss.
The menu on the table does point out in small low contrast type that you can ask for poached eggs, etc., to be cooked to order. When I say small low contrast type I don't mean they tried to hide the information, the whole menu is like that.
In fact the whole place is just irritatingly not quite satisfactory. It has all the right components but they aren't quite assembled right. In the room there are three mirrors, one above the desk, one almost full length on the wall at the foot of the bed, and one above the sink in the bathroom. But when I tried to apply my lipstick I discovered that the lighting was, for want of a better word, arranged so that my lips were in shadows whichever mirror I tried. There are bedside lights both sides of the bed and they have LED reading lights on flexible stalks but they are mounted so low that it's impossible to point them at a book while sitting upright.
At breakfast instead of bottles of sauce on each table there are bowls filled with sachets in the buffet cabinets. These sachets have no obvious way of being opened, I had to saw at one with the cutlery. The Chase (Greene King) in Nuneaton did breakfast better in most ways.
This place was converted from a row of Victorian middle class houses and I think the original conversion must have been done a long time ago. Whoever did it didn't address the problem of squeaky floorboards. I don't mind the boards in my room squeaking:-) but it's annoying when the ones in the room above do and there is an occupant who seems to spend the evening pacing back and forth!
I was upgraded from a single to a double room, thank goodness. This room is fairly dark and doesn't get much direct sunlight which with current weather conditions is a good thing so if I close the window before I go out it should stay relatively cool.
The place is a bit like the Tree Hotel in Iffley but on a grander scale, all the right materials put together with insufficient thought.
70-79, TVIP
