Chopin Boutique B&B

In all my travels, that's the only hotel where an employee has pointed out the "Tip" line on the credit card receipt. The inclusion of "boutique" in the name bugs me, too; it's not that sort of place. I didn't have a cleanliness issue in 2018, and I liked the location, but I didn't consider it a particularly good value. I think staff were present on site, but you had to seek them out. It didn't seem all that much like a Rick Steves place--though I seldom end up at spots he's recommended, because I am cheap.

In 2020, I considered it but I wasn't super impressed and opted for Motel One. I made the same decision for my redo this August. Your post is very timely as it sounds like I've made a good choice.

Motel One was on my list. I chose the B&B because I needed a laundry option and didn’t want to figure out the laundry issue at Motel One. I walked by the Motel One and kind of wished I had stayed there. I loved that it was right beside the University. That area has a really good vibe!

Dave,
Did you give your feedback to Rick Steves? They have an option where you can do that regarding guidebook recommendations.

I usually have good luck with RS recommendations. I've only stayed one place in Europe where I was really disappointed and that I found on Booking.com. I did stay at Chopin a couple years ago. I was happy enough with them. The staff was helpful, except that we had to ring a bell and wait. We thought the breakfast was excellent. I did feel it was a decent value, for that category of accommodation, it was the lowest price I found. The room was large but outlets were really a problem. I recall that we either had to balance the water heater in the bathroom or pull a piece of furniture forward. They did hold our luggage for a whole day and let us hang around in the evening until we left to go to the airport at about 10pm.

I agree that "boutique" is not a good descriptor.

If we returned to Warsaw, we would check around for another place to stay, but if we didn't find a place we felt was better, we'd stay again.

I stayed in Chopin Boutique B&B in 2022 and would stay there again. I like the owner’s support of refugees from Ukraine, and musicians in particular. I appreciated the musical evening I attended, the breakfasts, the mish-mash of restored and repurposed furniture in the rooms, the bicycles for customer use, the bee hives on the roof, and the plant-filled terrace. Thankfully, I didn’t encounter a less-than-clean room. I’m not writing to correct the record because we all experience places differently and have different experiences, but I don’t want this hotel to be dismissed without pointing out what were, for me, its plusses.

Pre internet, so in the 80s and well into the 90s, I always relied on the RS guidebook for hotel recommendations, and I was usually satisified with what I picked from his list. However, with all of the available info and booking engines on the internet now, I literally never look at the RS hotel recommendations anymore, mainly because the guide books get outdated very quickly, particularly through the pandemic years. I have good luck with TripAdvisor reviews finding hotels and restaurants, as well as google and booking.com reviews, although I almost always book hotels through their own websites / booking engines and not the review / aggregator sites.

JoJoRabbit, I do occasionally find restaurants and inns in the RS books that are no longer in business. I still find the guide to be helpful as a starting point. When I pull places out of the RS guide it is nice to be able to do some double checking on the web on Tripadvisor and booking.

There was a rice table restaurant my husband and I loved in Amsterdam. We will be in Amsterdam for a short time in September and wanted to return to the restaurant and couldn't find the name in the newest RS guide. That frustrated me so I tracked it down and it had closed, thus removed from the guide. Too bad, we really enjoyed it.

It’s been 5 years since our trip to Poland, so a little unfair to add my 2 cents. We were disappointed by the Chopin recital. The pianist was not well prepared. It’s a cute idea to have a Chopin recital in a hotel named for the composer, but the execution of the idea wasn’t so great. Maybe we went on an off night.

Just curious, what city in Poland is this in?

@nancy, Warsaw