Grand Yiju Hotel (Nanjing Xinjiekou center)

The location is the best thing about this hotel. I find the 4.7 rating a little hard to believe to be honest. The photos on trip.com do not accurately reflect the quality of the rooms and hotel exterior. It is clearly quite old. The common areas are fine, the corridors have a lovely authentic Chinese style but the rooms are basic. The room we stayed in could do with a lick of paint. The shower wasn’t cleaned properly (see photo of fake eyelashes from the previous guest). Breakfast is the traditional Chinese tasting box type thing so be warned. It’s not for me. However, the real kicker of our stay was the noise at night. I endured the worst nights sleep in any hotel in my life. Bur not due to the bed or bedding which was nice. The traffic was loud but in addition to that, it sounded like someone in an apartment next to us or above us was moving heavy wooden furniture around almost the entire night. It was insane. Also, the sound of a metallic ball bouncing on a marble floor woke me up 3 times. I have no clue what that was but we heard the exact same sound again at breakfast. That was really, really annoying. If you book, I suggest you request a room not facing the main road. It’d probably be much quieter. I must say that in checkout when asked about our stay, my wife mentioned the noise and the lady on reception gave our two children a souvenir and gave us a gift box which was very kind of her.

We stayed at this hotel for 3 nights and the front desk staff, especially the receptionist Xiaozhan, were very attentive! The hotel was located near Xinjiekou (新街口） station in the centre of Nanjing which made it easy to travel around the city by metro. The hotel is also surrounded by lots of local eats which were tasty and affordable! We added the hotel front desk on WeChat which made it easy to ask for more towels and toiletries. The in-room laundry machine was a big plus, you can ask for detergent from the front desk. Hotel breakfast can be added on and is served every morning from 7am-9am. Located on the second floor, they served a warm traditional Chinese style breakfast with self-serve coffee and orange juice.