I recently stayed at the Leonardo Hotel in Köln, whilst visiting the Star Wars Identities exhibition at Köln's Odysseum Museum. The hotel is situated on the East side of the River Rhine, which is the opposite side to the city's main attractions, including the Cathedral and Old Town. In terms of distance, it is too far to walk for most people, but is reachable with a number 3 tram in around 15 minutes from the city centre. Trams are every 15 minutes in the daytime, but be warned they finish early (before 1am). The hotel is a 5 minute walk from the tram stop located at Buchforst-Waldecker Straße. The other ways to reach the hotel are by bus 159, which stops straight outside the hotel, or if arriving in Köln by train, it is probably most simple to get the S-Bahn from Köln Hauptbahnhof to Köln-Buchforst railway station. This is a 7-10 minute walk from the hotel along a flat path. The hotel is situated in a residential neighbourhood of Köln, which is multicultural in terms of the people and shops, but seemed safe and pleasant enough to me, there are bars and small convenience stores nearby. The hotel is also next door to a major supermarket. The hotel lobby and foyer is large and open, and the reception staff I found to be friendly and helpful, speaking excellent English. The decór is slightly trapped in the 1980s, but is all clean and mostly well maintained. There are two lifts (elevators) from the lobby up to the bedrooms. These seem a little older, but worked just fine. Downstairs there is also a bar and outside smoking area (I didn't use either), and a restaurant, which I used for the breakfast buffet, which was very good, again with very friendly and helpful staff. The bedroom was of an average size, again with an 80's 'brown' decor, it was fine overall, and the bed was large, although it was VERY low (be warned if you struggle with low beds). There was a plug socket in the bed head, which was rather unusual, but worked just fine, and the room had a safe, free bottle of water and flat screen TV as well as the following furniture: desk, hard chair, soft chair, wardrobe, cupboard, king sized bed, luggage storage area, bed side tables, desk lamp, over bed lamps and a coffee table. The bedroom window was very large and opened fully, bringing in the sounds of the autobahn as well as some fresh air. When closed the autobahn was not audible. The room did have air-conditioning, but it wasn't very good, the outside temperature was 28-30 degrees during our stay, and the room never really got cool. The bathroom was a bit more dated and quite small with some areas of damage to tiles. It was a very high shower bath arrangement, and not accessible to anyone who struggles with this type of thing. The bath surface was also slippery when wet, as was the tiled bathroom floor - we ended up using towels as mats just to stop ourselves from slipping. The shower was old but very powerful - but it also sprayed onto the floor, such was the power of the jet. There were complimentary creams, soaps and bath gels. A real strength of this hotel was the swimming pool on the lower ground floor. I went in three times for one hour at a time and had it entirely to myself. It was a bit cool temperature wise, but I very much enjoyed using it. Overall I liked this hotel, it was conveniently located for me to get to the Odysseum, but not great for the city centre (just in terms of commute time). I would consider staying there again, although I would probably also consider other hotels that were nearer the Hauptbahnhof and Cathedral. This film features views around all of the areas of the hotel that I have mentioned above, both inside and out. To see a film taken around the City of Cologne, click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAWpMJTAO_E . To read about Cologne, click here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cologne . If you liked this film there are many more like it on my YouTube channel, which can be found at https://www.youtube.com/user/stuartmoss . Please do check out my channel and subscribe to my videos by clicking the red subscribe button. You can also find my travel films and photography updates on the following: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mosstravel please like my Facebook page. WordPress: http://mosstraveltv.wordpress.com please follow my blog by clicking the +Follow link. Tumblr: http://stuartmoss.tumblr.com please follow my blog by clicking the +Follow button. Blogger: http://mosstraveltv.blogspot.co.uk please follow my blog by bookmarking the page. Google+ just add +stuartmoss . You can follow my travels on Twitter @mosstraveltv or by visiting https://twitter.com/mosstraveltv .

• published: 29 Jul 2015
• views: 302