For our three night Munich/Salzburg extravaganza, we planned to explore Salzburg for the first two nights and with a wealth of hotel options, decided to take the plunge on the Arcotel Castellani, a reasonably priced option that looked not too far from the town centre, but also not right in the thick of everything. So, how was it?
After a delightful, standing room-only train journey from Munich, we opted not to even attempt wandering the streets with our luggage – a wise choice, as it turned out, based on the actual distance from the train station – and quickly hopped into a taxi.
Salzburg downtown is actually quite compact and very walkable, but the Arcotel Castellani is definitely a roughly 15 minute brisk walk to the old town, and what would be easily 30 to 45 minute walk to or from the train station. As a result, we walked generally into town, but got a taxi back out – and always got a taxi to the train station, and to and from the Sound of Music (Panorama Tours) meeting point.
The hotel is set in its own grounds, set back from the main road, and nestled within an otherwise suburban area.
Check-in was quick, with a credit card deposit required, before we were dispatched to our room – set down a glass corridor from the main hotel building, into a newer annex.
Our room, a standard Deluxe Double Room, was pleasant and functional; with the usual continental two single duvets thing going on, on our double bed.
Alongside that, we had a work desk in the corner, a solitary chair and cocktail table from which to look outside, a wall-mounted TV, and a coffee/tea making station set on one of the several shelves.
No town or river views as such – instead we gazed down on the very picturesque, what I believe to be St. Joseph’s chapel, on the grounds of the hotel.
Our bathroom was clean and reasonably sized, with a combined bath tub/shower. My only two issues were that the hot water occasionally became searing during the shower – I mean ‘jump out for fear of third degree burns’ hot, and that the extractor unfortunately seemed slightly underpower for the size of the room and the amount of steam generated during a shower (especially with occasional bursts of heat!).
We were up early both mornings for breakfast, which was downstairs back in the main building and interestingly, seemed to be a ‘sit yourself’ event featuring several different rooms of varying sizes; a main dining room to the front of the building, which got full the quickest – along with at least two smaller rooms to the rear of the building, that always seemed to remain slightly emptier.
Breakfast was a very thorough spread fitted awkwardly along and to the side of a narrow corridor bissecting the front and rear of the building. There was a very generous selection of juices, breads, continental meats, and much more – certainly you’d be hard pressed not to find something.
Meanwhile, to the rear of the long corridor, were two coffee machines that were arguably the most popular items at breakfast and seemed to always have a steady queue lined up both in the corridor, and stretching across at times into the adjoining dining room.
After a hearty breakfast on our second morning, it was time to check-out and begin what would be a nightmare day of train travel – more of which I’ll detail in a forthcoming post soon.
But suffice to say that for a brief city break, Arcotel Castellani Salzburg was functional, clean, and did the trick. The only aspects that would make me think twice in future would be the realistic distance from Salzburg town centre without a car, and the lack of any other amenities in the immediate vicinity – but again, for our short stay, it did what it needed to do.
