Like U Hotel Brasília

“A pleasant surprise”

This turned out to be a very pleasant, clean, simple kind of mid-range hotel, with friendly and helpful staff, a decent restaurant (not exotic, by any means), fast wi-fi (for RS18 per day), and a nicely furnished room and a good bathroom. It's obviously been completely renovated since some of the q… more

This turned out to be a very pleasant, clean, simple kind of mid-range hotel, with friendly and helpful staff, a decent restaurant (not exotic, by any means), fast wi-fi (for RS18 per day), and a nicely furnished room and a good bathroom. It's obviously been completely renovated since some of the quite negative reviews of a few years ago, though it is not smart, contemporary, if that's the kind of thing you want. It's right next door to Patio Brasil, a large shopping mall with good restaurants and much else: Viena on the top floor for a splendid, delicious, pay-by-weight buffet; Kopenhagen for super coffee and chocolate on the second; two large bookshops and all the other usual fashion, phone and banking facilities. I don't think Brasilia is much of a place for tourists: a day or two is all you need to see what there is to see (remarkable architecture, if a little tired and worn, for example), but the city is dominated by motor vehicles and there is no street life as such, as far as I could find. Bristol Hotel is in the central hotel sector, so is likely to be convenient for meetings and conferences; my conference was in the Brasil 21 complex, just a few minutes' walk away. At this time of year (early November) there's been a lot of rain. Yesterday, internet for the whole sector was knocked out for twelve hours or so by heavy rain. Comfortable temperatures in the low to mid twenties. Very few people anywhere here seem to speak English. There's one guy at the hotel who's great, but in shops, museums, taxis, not a word as far as I can tell. So be prepared!

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