Having stayed at several Best Western hotels in the US and Europe before I felt I was probably on to a reasonably safe thing with this location for 2 nights. First thing is the taxi fare from the airport is around 60 RON = £14/$20 and make sure you use the taxis marked with a black oval on the back passenger doors as these are metered and controlled by the city council.

From the outside the hotel looks like many of the building in Timisoara - concrete - but once you get inside there is an old world opulence to the place. Ornate cornices, oil paintings, gilt, dark woods, heavy furniture and marble everywhere. The staff were excepetional throughout my stay and because I asked for breakfast @ €10, I got an upgrade!

I stayed on the 4th floor in a magnificent suite. A previous reader stated how dark it was and I agree but once you lift the external blinds I had glorious sunlight shining through and could work easily without lights on. The lounge area contained a 3 seat settee and a single chair both large and old fashioned (see photo). There was a long narrow table to work on plus a huge sideboard which housed a reasonably stocked minibar and had the flatscreen TV on as well as the usual hotel bumpf such as tea & coffee maker and information. The TV was at least 26" and there were a large choice of channels available in many languages., It seems the Romanian nation chooses to subtitle programs rather than to over dub them and according to a work collegaue, this is how many of the nation learn a second/third language.

All of the staff spoke good English. The room was quadruple glazed - 2 double glazed windows, that you could open fully or tilt. Reception is manned 24 hours a day and it is only a 5-10 minute walk to the fascinating centre of town.

The bed area was spacious and the bed, (see photo) although quite low, was queen size and the mattress was nice and comfortable. There were aditional pillows and blankets in the sideboard in the lounge area. In addition, there was another TV mounted on the wall.

The bathroom was spotless and wonderfully ornate (see photos) and the bath was also a jacuzzi which was a lovely touch. Here there was also all of the extras that you left at home like toothpaste/brush, razor, etc and anything else the satff would get for you. The shower was powerful and hot water was available whenever I needed it. The is a shaving mirror, plenty of glasses, toilet rolls, face cloths and decent sized towels. The toilet has an extremely long flush to it!

Room service is available at a 25% premium but care is taken to lay it out as if you were dining properly and the wait was less than 30 minutes in all cases. Even with this premium added it is still great value. Breakfast is in the dining room and it has pretty much all you need in terms of cereals, egg, bacon, mushrooms etc, plus tea, coffee and fruit juice.

Now despite my waxing lyrical about this hotel it did have some faults. The TV in the bedroom area had poor reception on a lot of the channels, unlike the main TV in the lounge area, and the remote control had some faulty buttons that didn't work. In the bathroom, the shower curtain is very thin and it is all too easy to soak the floor if the shower is pointing at the curtain. There was no room service menu so I had to ask for the dining room one which the staff were happy for me to have. These were howver, small things in the grand scheme of things.

I would highly recommend this hotel and will stay there again when I visit.