Has anyone stayed at the Castle Hotel Liebenstein on the Rhine?
Apr 16th, 2000, 04:28 AM
#3
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A poster named Giner gave her two cents on Liebenstein on the Eurotrip board last summer -- she gave it about ten thumbs down. Here's the address to her page of comments: <BR> <BR>www.eurotrip.com/Forum1/HTML/002030.html
Apr 16th, 2000, 08:05 AM
#4
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That would be me on the Eurotrip board, and yep, I still give it a "no" recommendation. (The only accommodation from our trip through Paris, Chamonix, Venice, Munich, the Rhine, and Amsterdam that I don't recommend.) <BR> <BR>The problems: <BR> <BR>1. It's located *very* far from the train station; it took us between half an hour and 40 minutes to walk, and we're young and in pretty good shape. The village at the base of the steep cliff road leading up to Liebenstein is Bornhofen, which has next to nothing in the way of amenities. I like sleepy little villages, but there wasn't much of interest here...a couple of hotels catering to the coach crowd, a couple of sit-down only restaurants, and that's about it. Everything in the "twin cities" of Kamp-Bornhofen is down near the train station in Kamp. <BR> <BR>There is a cab service from near the train station to the castle, but I didn't love having to pay six or seven dollars every time we didn't want to waste 40 minutes getting back up there (or back down). <BR> <BR>2. The rooms are dingy and ill-maintained. I somewhat expected that in an old castle, but considering the fairly low-rent properties we'd stayed in, I don't think our standards were too high. It took absolutely *forever* to get even lukewarm water in the shower (again, we had been staying at bargain properties where we did not have this problem all the rest of the trip). <BR> <BR>3. The staff/proprietors weren't exactly helpful. In fact, when we got back to the hotel at 9 pm one night (after plodding in the pouring rain from the ferry stop to Kamp, where we could get that cab), no one was around, the place was shut tight for the night (we had a key). When we got up and were getting ready to leave the next morning, at about 8:30, there was still no sign of life...so we just left our payment on the counter with a note and walked out. <BR> <BR>4. Kamp-Bornhofen is on the "inconvenient" side of the Rhine; most of the villages you will probably want to see are on the opposite side, so there's the matter of ferrying back and forth across the Rhine at Boppard or wherever. That can be fun, but it's something to be aware of when planning your day, since it's definitely going to add a lot of travel time into it. <BR> <BR>Now, all this said, things may well be very different at Burg Liebenstein in high summer. (We were there in late September.) Nonetheless, it is the one property that we stayed at on the Europe trip that I would definitely not stay at again. <BR> <BR>Sorry if I've disappointed anyone, but I *really* wish I'd had this information before we took our trip last year. It really was the one sour note in an otherwise perfect vacation.
