Sleeping in the Baltics by Graeme Harwood
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Back in Soviet times (pre-early 90’s), the rock stars Metallica, Depeche Mode and Michael Jackson had one thing in common: straight after their gigs, they hopped the first plane out of every Baltic capital – possibly abandoning their entourages to an evening of making-do but no way, man, were they, like, going to stay one single solitary night in Riga, Vilnius or Tallinn. They wouldn’t say that now. No other part of Europe has turned itself around in the last ten years so rapidly and so much – economically, politically and touristically – as the Baltic Republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The world, generally, still doesn’t know this. As the first US President to visit Lithuania, George Bush wouldn’t have known where ‘Villainous’ was anyway but might have packed a gun just in case. From 2004, when all three join The European Community, the word is going to spread fast. So, in the spirit of things, here’s a quick word on Baltic hotels: expect to pay at these top of the range, best value hotels from 112 Euros a night for Double Room and Breakfast in Vilnius, through 162 E a night in Riga to 225 E a night in Tallinn, the most sophisticated of the three. Let’s start with Tallinn. That way, the economics of this article will, Baltic-style, become rosier as it goes along.
Tallinn has three Old Town hotels to consider: the 5-star Schlossle, the 4-star St.Petersbourg and the 3-star Vana Wiru. They differ more by century than price, strange to say, so it’s really up to you if you prefer the C13th, the C19th or C21st contemporary. That said, if money is tight you will always do the cheapest deal at the Vana Wiru. It’s just that the upmarket rooms in the 3-star hotel cost the same as the standard doubles (Low Season) in the superior ones. Weird, I know, but Tallinn at the right time of year can be your oyster as a result. Both the pearls of Tallinn belong to The Schlossle Hotel group – a very small boutique chain insistent on historical and architectural fidelity throughout yet able to infuse their premises with ‘a Schlossle atmosphere’ of luxury, comfort, warmth and service – making this new name, for me at least, a recommendation to enter. They achieve the Schlossle effect through having liveried staff trained to be informal and grand interior design made to feel homely.
Hotel Schlossle is the only 5-star hotel in Estonia, regular roof to Royals ( like Prince Charles ), Government Ministers (galore) and, if I might for a moment be personal, much better rock stars in Joe Cocker, The Pet Shop Boys and Sting. What the Schlossle offers is an ancient yet extremely intimate experience in a slightly more central location, staffed by people in black morning coats and pink waistcoats as if they’ve just wandered back from a fashionable wedding. Like the C13th limestone house it was – replete with candles, beams, fireplaces, portals of cut stone, spiral staircases and walls of bare brick or thick, uneven rendering – The Schlossle only has 23 rooms. Probably as a consequence I had the cosiest night in a hotel I’ve ever had. The low ceilings, deep carpets and thick curtains make you feel positively wrapped in. Rooms at the front of the hotel can run the risk of conversations out of the blue at 2am ricocheting round the narrow street, so if you’re a delicate flower in this matter, opt for a Gardenside Room at the back and pay the 22 Euros a night more. Gastronomically, you are at the absolute epicentre of Tallinn. The Stenhus Restaurant downstairs in the vaulted basement is cheffed by Tonis Siigur, the top cooking talent in town, whose only rival restaurant could be Nevskij at The St Petersbourg Hotel – also made in his mirror image by the man himself. The Schlossle Group takes food very seriously too. May they go straight to heaven for that.
The Hotel St. Petersbourg, C15th in origin though it may be, has been the preferred choice of C19th aristocracy since 1850 – and, no doubt, admiring hordes of nouveaux riches German merchants both able to eat there and anxious to ape their every well-bred gesture. But The St. Petersbourg, whilst parading itself in a cloak of official C19th grandeur, manages simultaneously to wear it lightly. Sure, all the formal features are there – high ceilings, brass stair-rods, studded leather chairs, long windows netted and draped extravagantly, heavy Victorian colours confidently proclaiming themselves, even down to the staff sporting regimental jackets of pillar-box red, buttoned and piped – but their strictness is offset by sunny fabrics, plentiful pastels, furniture strewn casually around and tastefully cheeky little hints of Art Deco creeping into the Victoriana (cf. the railing on the hotel’s main staircase). Plus the staff have the Schlossle style of always being able to smile a welcome at you, however big a prat you’re making of yourself at the time. Rooms (27 in all) are larger here than at The Schlossle, and down below there’s also The Kuldse Notsu Korts. Sounds like a bank, yet it’s actually one of Tallinn’s ‘must-do’ lunch venues; a brightly wholesome country restaurant serving only Estonian Food (pork-driven but it has occurred to them to eat fish too).
If you want to be really promiscuous spend a couple of nights in each hotel, as I did, but if it’s solely down to cash, The Hotel Vana Wiru wins. This is a 5-storey building located at the start of the C21st historically - and geographically right on the main street , in The Old Town of course. It’s clearly designed for a conference clientele: somehow the opulently marbled and reassuringly ruched reception areas dwindle, via a smart business centre, down into starkly modern bedrooms, shorn of frills, even if they do all have free internet access. Grandeur for the cost-conscious executive though it may be, The Vana Wiru only got that far by playing its 3 stars generously. Nowhere better than the 5th floor rooms to take advantage of that, where Standard Doubles come in at 110 and Junior Suites at 135 Euros a night. Apart from being quieter (there’s a noisy pub/restaurant on the ground floor) these top-floor rooms invitingly slope attic-style and boast skylight vistas over to The Old Town.
South to Vilnius now for, once again, just three hotels. Don’t think I’m obsessed with the figure 3, I’ve 5 for you in Riga. But, as any number of Royals, Presidents, Ambassadors and Opera Singers will tell you, there’s only one Hotel Stikliai. Tucked down a somnolent, cobbled alley-way in The Old Town, this is where the old money sleeps, although they’ll let you in as well. You won’t have gone far before realising – from the orgy of dark pastels, antiques and fresh flowers – that this is a Relais and Chateaux Hotel. But beware, some of the 29 rooms are on the small side and some a la francais will only permit a shower, so never book without a little chat first. Otherwise, The Stikliai couldn’t disappoint you: from entrance through its portals painted with C17th Glass-Blowers (‘The Stikliai’) right down into its basement sauna/pool of Greco-Roman decadence, it will delight. Your bank manager might think otherwise.
Only if he looks terminal should you offer to re-locate to The Hotel Radisson SAS Astorija. The moment he knows it’s the best value hotel in Vilnius, he’ll get all his blossom back. Unfortunately yours, at this point, is correspondingly scheduled to wilt – when you discover that the hotel’s all-night flood-lighting disappointingly beats the curtains; to open a window is to re-ignite that worst nightmare debate of every traveller, Sod The Traffic Noise, Go For The Fresh Air or Suffocate Me Now, Can’t Stand Another Truck; the same old stuff is going to be laid out in the very same place every single morning of the drably unimaginative Breakfast Buffet. But, never mind, you’ll still have plenty of blossom left. The Radisson’s rooms are both decently sized and more than corporately comfortable; The Radisson’s Astorija Bar with its ground-floor, floor-to-ceiling windows, charmingly allows you to illustrate to Vilnius, from a position of subduedly-lit snuggery, that you are there and vice-versa; The Radisson’s Exterior will mightily impress your friends, almost leaping out of itself to give a Classical two-finger salute to The Old Town below it.
The Hotel Shakespeare only has one quarter of The Radisson’s 120 rooms but four times the charm. Peacefully down an Old Town side-street, The Shakespeare contrives to suggest, through its English Old Boys Club atmosphere, that it’s probably been there for ever. But you will have to tailor your own bespoke bedroom. Double Room tariffs fly around from 162-208E, dropping by 50 Euros a night on week-ends. Then it’s just a matter of three questions: how big is the room, what facilities does it have and who’s it dedicated to? Sensitive choice, this. Particularly when every room is harmonised to the aura of a different literary character. No real Oscar Wilde fan wants to be surrounded all night by photos of Ernest Hemingway leering at him with a bottle and a dead animal any more than true devotees of ‘Papa’ would crave being coo-eed ‘Goodnight’ to from the wallpaper by any of Oscar’s long-haired lovelies. Kick-start a conversation in The Shakespeare’s very friendly Lounge Bar with something like ‘Who’s aura might you be sleeping under?’ and you’ve got the best chance in Vilnius of an intelligent reply, probably educated, possibly humorous. If, that is, you don’t get hit. Don’t miss The Shakespeare’s top, fresh-cooked breakfast in town – even if you have just experienced the night of your life in The Othello Room. Above all, The Shakespeare is fun and, as you’ve probably guessed by now, by dint of its Lithuanian wackiness, by some long way my favourite hotel in Vilnius.
But don’t talk to me about the Hotel Grand Palace in Riga and then I don’t have to give you any of its details. All you need to know is, sadly, that the most expensive 5-star DBB in town (243E/£174 a night) just ain’t worth it. Grand only in patches, the hotel’s bedrooms are too small, it’s peripheral to the heart of The Old Town and seemingly staffed by people who have raised to an art form keeping you peripheral to them. No-one could change money for me at The Reception on the one night I asked; no-one, spookily, ever said ‘Hello’. Only marginally better off, I’m afraid, to mention to me Hotel Rolands. In everything but its prices (210E/£147 a night for DBB), this hotel is weapons grade Scandinavian Minimalism – which is all a little bit unfortunate as me and minimalism, er basically, don’t. I’d rather be in the garden with my step-ladder; never got on with my real ladder – by way of a piece of impromptu silliness to suggest my complete mental unsuitability for this type of architecture. I recognise that its exterior is perfectly shaped into the profile of The Old Town buildings around it. I grant that enthusiasts will enter and swoon at the use of purely hand-crafted natural products climaxing with an indoor waterfall and an ergonomic chair in the bedroom, glass walls rampant and all colours gratifyingly neutered. I only know that different antennae came out in me. Confusion began on arrival when I managed towalk straight past The Hotel Rolands Main Front Office and Reception Desk, primarily because it was just that, a desk, and I hadn’t realised the deprivations of minimalism had already begun. Clarity had dawned fully by the time I got upstairs. The bedroom looked like an office that had been burgled, with some brain-cracking technology left behind to make up for the lack of décor. However, although minimalism is wasted on me, I do accept that The Rolands is in its own way some kind of achievement.
The Hotel de Rome is your best bet in Riga. There’s nothing remotely Italian about it and it doesn’t have, as far as I know, a sister Hotel de Riga in Rome but its location in this capital city just couldn’t be better. You’re majestically sited at the main point where Old Riga – sights,shopping,businesses and nightlife – meets New Riga – The City Gardens, Freedom Monument and Latvian National Opera – over which you get a superb view every morning from your top-floor breakfast table in the swanky Otto Schwarz Restaurant. Prices are admirably restrained at 162E/£113 a night DBB for full-on 5-star treatment in a setting of 20’s and 30’s Art Deco Posh Sunken Lounge Lizard – to which glamorous heyday in the hotel’s existence it was expensively re-united by renovations completed in 1991.Add a long list of celebrity guests into some historical form and you’ll immediately see why for you The Hotel de Rome is de rigueur.
Similarly excellent value for money are two 3-star hotels, Konventa Seta and Vecriga, both quietly cloistered in The Old Town – literally so in the case of ‘The Convent Cloister’, or as it’s known to the locals, Hotel Konventa Seta. Whether you pay 90E/£63 a night for DBB here or 105/£73 a night at The Vecriga you can’t go far wrong and there’s not much difference between the two anyway. Knowing The Vecriga is the owner-managed boutique style of place with only ten rooms on offer, might sway it for some. Although knowing The Konventa Seta can do suites and junior suites amongst its 141 rooms, sits privately in its own medieval courtyard and is both owned and run by The Hotel de Rome, probably shades it for me. Neither hotel, it should be said, is shy about installing bright Scandinavian mod-cons to the detriment of its historical ancestry.
At the last count, Riga had 600 Bars, 120 Clubs, several late-night Churches for the liturgically minded, 4 million Escort Services, 9 Theatres, 6 Casinos, 88 Restaurants and 1 worthwhile Opera House if, that is, you succeed in getting much beyond Happy Hour starting at 4.30pm. every day in a city 50% full of Russians – which I didn’t manage to today, so take all the above figures, as I did, with a pinch of salt, comrade. But one thing’s for sure: Riga is Party Central to The Baltics and the last place on earth you should consider, as the title of this article runs, sleeping in The Baltics.