Review of Grand Hotel Wien, by Jamie Dunford Wood

Grand Hotel Wien is altogether a wonderful and expensive place. You will fall in love with 'your' room and want to come back again and again. It pulls off that ultimate trick of feeling like home, which only a hotel lovingly nurtured over many years can achieve. Ideally located on Kärntner Ring, it is only a stroll away from the Vienna State Opera, the famous Kärntner Straße and the grandeur of St. Stephen's Cathedral.

Downstairs, the walls are covered in signed photos from famous guests such as Princess Grace and Queen Elizabeth. The café leads off from the main restaurant for convenient after-dinner coffees. The hotel offers seven function rooms that you can use for conferences or banquets. Take advantage of the 24-hour health club. Go shopping in Ringstrassen-Galerien Shopping Mall for the finest shopping in Vienna, as the lobby is just a step away from the hotel.

The whole atmosphere is one of privileged seclusion from the hubbub of central Vienna, but with this over-arching feeling of home. I suggest eating their Sacher Torte before an evening at the Opera Ball in February, which Frau Gurtler arranges herself.

The Grand Hotel Wien offers 205 spacious suites and rooms, luxuriously furnished and tastefully decorated. Ceilings are high, like many of these old Vienna hotels, but bathrooms are small. Most rooms are wallpapered in a selection of patterns.