Lord Nelson Hotel, Stockholm, Sweden

The welcoming tipple, chocolate and accompanying note that you discover on squashing into your “cabin” at the Lord Nelson Hotel says a lot about this property. “Warmly welcome! We wish you a pleasant stay. Family Bengtsson and staff” reads the handwritten message, and from the moment you read this, you feel as if the hand of Swedish hospitality has been extended to you. Staying here has all the best elements of staying in a 29 room B&B, in terms of the hospitality, the intimacy of the hotel’s public spaces and the character of both the individual guest rooms and the hotel as a whole.

The Lord Nelson is an antidote to all those soulless boxes where you’ve ever had the misfortune to lay your head. There are still all the requisites of a 3 star hotel but here there is a sense too of staying in somebody’s home, adorned with the owners’ idiosyncratic, in this case nautical-themed, nick-nacks.

But in this case the home happens to be in one of the best historical locations in Stockholm, in the heart of the Old Town (Gamla Stan), among the gift shops of its main cobbled thoroughfare, Vasterlanggatan. On my snowy December visit this was a particular advantage as we could dart out to Gamla Stan’s nearby sights, and to the Christmas markets in the Old town square, collecting just a light dusting of white flakes before retreating into the warm.

The Lord Nelson is the smallest and cheapest of three nautical-themed properties in Gamla Stan, owned by Bengstsson family, the other two being the Lady Hamilton and the classy Victory Hotel. This 17th century building was also the first they bought – in 1973 – and in which they developed the maritime theme. It was entirely renovated in 2002.

Quite why the family are such fans of Britain’s most famous admiral is not clear. But from the one-armed, one-eyed wooden bust of his holiness in the window, through all the paintings and memorabilia on the walls to the names of the rooms, there are many reminders of the man responsible for seeing off Napolean at the Battle of Trafalgar. There is also a more generic sense of actually being aboard a ship here: you check in at a long mahogany desk, go to your “cabin” on one of several “decks” (“Gun”, “Upper”, “Quarter” and so on) and enter a tiny wooden-floored room which gets its name from a model of a ship mounted on the wall inside. You almost expect the place to creak and sway and to go to your bunk popping sea-sickness tablets.

As reputedly Sweden’s narrowest hotel (at 5m or sixteen feet) there is hardly enough room inside this hotel in which to swing a ship’s cat. But that is part of its charm. Everything you’ll need has been fitted into even the smallest of the guest rooms, including a desk, en suite shower and basin and, somewhat incongruously, cable TV. The large proportion of singles (18 out of 29) and the general friendliness here makes this a good choice for individual travellers and business people. The only problems with the hotel’s size come if you have big luggage or if more than 15 people arrive at the same time for the buffet breakfast, downstairs beside reception. But in the latter case, being dispatched with a breakfast tray to the first floor library overlooking Vasterlanggatan, is not a great hardship.

In fact this cosy library, complete with a couple of antique ship’s canons, an old ship’s compass and a grandfather clock made in 1815, is a lovely place in which to hang out and observe the comings and goings of Gamla Stan in the street below. There is a useful internet connection for guests laid on in the library too. For the warmer months, the Lord Nelson has a roof terrace, with views over much of the medieval Old Town. Downstairs in the basement, they have managed to fit in a small sauna, which you can book for private use.

The amiable service throughout a stay at the Lord Nelson caps off the initial good impression of being in a family home, with none of the infringement on your personal space that can make a visit to a Bed and Breakfast uncomfortable. All in all, for service, location and character the Lord Nelson is a good bet among Stockholm’s 3 and 4 star hotels.