Mandala Hotel, Berlin: road house review

By Lucinda Baring 1146AM GMT twenty-two March 2010

Previous of Images Next Each of the 156 bedrooms is a really great area and has a kitchenette and seating area The ambience is Zen-like lots of flickering candles and dusky lighting The first-floor Qiu loll becomes bustling in the evenings

Location

Brandenburger Hof, Berlin Ellington Hotel, Berlin How the East was rediscovered More on holidays in Germany Life at the back of the Iron Curtain Berlin, Germany My Kind of Town

In Tiergarten on Potsdamer Platz, a bustling intersection broken in the fight and forlorn in 1961, when the Berlin Wall cut it in two. This was one of the initial places the wall was breached in 1989, and it has given been redeveloped and easy as an critical open block and bustling street. The road house is inside of on foot area of the Brandenburg Gate and Reichstag.

Character

This is a watchful road house that is most incomparable than it looks. The ambience is Zen-like there is a gold-mosaic H2O underline in the lobby, lots of flickering candles, dusky lighting and bowls of dried, dim purple roses. The first-floor Qiu loll becomes bustling in the evenings and the vibe is smart nonetheless tranquil.

Rooms

Initially built in 2000 as a organisation of apartments, each of the 156 bedrooms is a really great area and has a kitchenette and seating area; even the smallest feels similar to a suite. They are atmospheric and light, with complicated but gentle furnishings and wooden floors. Accommodation starts on the fifth building so all bedrooms are quiet, on top of any street-level noise.

Food

Lunch and cooking are served in a pleasing Japanese-style conservatory, flooded with light and full of trees and shrubs; the grill has a Michelin star. The fanciful breakfast runs until midday.

We similar to

The spa, that uses Dr Hauschka and Dermalogica products, is understated but brilliant. The aroma from scented candles pervades the complete hotel.

Not so keen

The German welfare for dual singular duvets rather than one double.

Essentials

0049 thirty 5900 50000; www.themandala.de Doubles from �130, together with breakfast.

Getting there

Until the new Berlin-Brandenburg airfield opens in late 2011, Berlin is served by dual airports Tegel and Schönefeld. Tegel is the closest to the city centre, buses run each five to twenty mins and cost less than €3 (�2.70); a cab costs nearer €25 and takes half an hour. The most appropriate approach to get in to locale from Schönefeld is by train, that runs to the centre, Mitte, in twenty-five minutes.

British Airways (0844 493 0787; britishairways.com) flies from Heathrow to Berlin Tegel fives times every day from �107.50. BMI (0844 848 4888; flybmi.com) flies from Heathrow and countless informal airports to Berlin Tegel from �150. EasyJet (0905 821 0905, calls cost 65p per minute; easyjet.com) flies from Gatwick, Luton, Liverpool, Bristol and Glasgow to Berlin Schönefeld airfield from �49.98.