We loved staying here, the town is beautiful, the lake is beautiful and we had a great 1 bedroom suite (comfy bed) with separate lounge area, big modern bathroom with excellent shower (great water pressure) and a lovely balcony with views straight onto the lake. Breakfast is your typical German (very good) fare and service is exceptional. Cannot and would not say one bad thing about it.

This hotel is located within 2 minutes walk of the centre of Schluchsee, so is in a perfect location for going into the town. Our room, and I believe most rooms have a view over the lake which is absolutely beautiful.

The hotel is newly refurbished, is very clean and comfortable. I have found that German beds are much harder than most people are used to in the UK, but this hotel has memory foam mattresses and were very comfortable.

We had booked just a normal hotel room, but when we arrived were told that as a better room was available we had been upgraded at no extra cost. So we were given an apartment with bedroom, sitting room, large hallway and nice bathroom with shower. As we were there for a walking holiday, the hallway was great to leave our walking gear in.

The hotel is quite small, so breakfast is in quite a small room but they have a very nice selection of continental-style breakfast. The staff are very nice, but don't really speak English. Most of the time this doesn't matter but be prepared. The tourist information centre is a minute's walk away and they do speak English if you need any information about the area.

The area generally is fantastic for walking - buy a walking map in the tourist info office for about 3 Euro, and off you go! Routes are perfectly marked and you won't get lost. Also, the Black Forest area has what they call their 'Konus' card - hotel guests get free train and bus travel, so it is easy to get around the local area for free, as far as into Freiburg which is a nice city.

Between the hotel and the lake is a reasonably busy road. We found it easy to ignore because the view was worth it, but if you are particularly sensitive to noise, you might not like it.

One negative with the hotel: they say they have bikes to rent, so one morning we asked for those. We had to make our own selection between about 10 bikes, had to move saddles, pump up tires etc, i.e. the bikes were't great. We cycled around the lake which took about 2 hours. As we had seen in the tourist office that they had bikes for hire for 3.50 Euro for half day, we didn't ask the hotel how much their hire was. Mistake! 10 Euro per bike! But I didn't complain because we had had the nice room upgrade.

Eating isn't great in the town. We ate at Tisch am Deckel (or similar name) one night and while reasonable tasty, I think the sauce was out of a bottle. They do advertise beef burgers 2.2 KG!!!!! Didn't try that. Cafe Hug and the cafe above the souvenir store in the town square are tasty but simple food, and they both close at 6pm. Hotel Schiff and Hotel Stern both looked good but we didn't get time to try them.

The day we travelled into Freiburg, we at at Martins Brau - a beer cellar, but with character and very nice food. Seemed very authentic compared to many other places. And they had menus in English too!

We stayed for a couple of nights. The hotel is great, the room is very big, with three separate rooms, we were very confortable and the breakfast was great! The staff very kind! Just near the center of Schlusee.