Rocco Forte Hotel Astoria St Petersburg

A five-star hotel in St Petersburg, the hotel Astoria is centrally located, actually right across from the St Issac's Cathedral on the south bank of the river Neva. It's a five minute walk to get to the main shopping (and pick-pocketed) street Nevsky Prospect and the Hermitage Museum. The metro stops however are a bit further, more like 10-15 minutes, depending on how fast you walk. So the location is definitely convenient.

Next to the elevators are brass plates engraved with names of famous people who have stayed here (I mistakenly put it in the Moscow review at first, if you had read that...) and we are talking about REAL famous people. Since we were in a tour group, we probably did not pay the king's ransom to stay there. The room was nice, and the maid honest (I dropped my credit card somewhere in the room one night before dinner, and thought it was lost during my outing, but found it safely placed in an envelope on the desk upon my return). I would say the room was not really luxurious but it was nothing to complain about. It was interesting to have a door to the bedroom area, almost had the feel of being an apartment.

The restaurant in the hotel was execellent, and we had breakfasts there every morning, and one dinner. The morning we left, we had to get up at 4am, and they had a small continental breakfast for us in the bar-afternoon tea area.