I booked this hotel because others were unavailable or very highly priced during the Thessaloniki International Trade Fair. The staff was friendly and they allowed for a discount and a late checkout.
The word "art" in the hotel's name is misleading: it is a typical old 2-star hotel with no art pretensions whatsoever. Nothing on the walls, no room decoration, old furniture. But the room and the bathroom were very clean, I should say, except for this old smell in the room and the corridor.
The bathroom even has a bathtub, a rarity for Greek hotels, and shampoo and shower gel are provided. The rest of the bathroom, hovewer, is typically Greek: do not throw paper in the toilet (use a special dustbin nearby), and be warned that the flush is not so strong (you might need to use the shower head instead!) It is difficult to blame the hotel for the shortcomings of the local drainage system, but the problem is not unsolvable, as more upmarket hotels have shown.
The breakfast was just acceptable (eggs, overboiled sausages, some cheap cheese - but ham was not good).
The hotel is located in the Ladadika district just opposite the old port and is central to most of the ancient and Byzantine monuments, the central square as well as the surviving part of the Jewish quarter. The whole city center is an hour's walk from this hotel. The Ladadika itself is full of fancy and in some cases cheap restaurants. The nearby Panellinion is good, if slightly overpriced, and the Beer Art restaurant is great. During the Friday and Saturday night there was no unacceptable noise (maybe because of crisis which led to the closure of several nearby discos).
In sum, Plaza art Hotel is a decent two-star choice, but really nothing special.
- Plaza Art Thessaloniki
